Stone of Heaven : The Secret History of Imperial Green Jade

The most valuable stone in the world, buried deep in the bedrock of the remotest mine in the world, is Imperial Green Jade (IGJ). It has been famed in the East for a thousand years. The stone became an Emperor's treasure, & was worshipped, ground into a powder to be ingested as the elixir of life, & traded. By the end of the 18th cent., European explorers were dispatched to negotiate with the Lord of Mines, but they all returned empty handed. It would be another 100 years before IGJ traveled to the West. And when it did it left behind a trail of rubble, misery & destruction. Today the IGJ mine is still nearly impossible to reach, isolated by a vindictive Burmese dictatorship. Here, Levy & Scott-Clark reveal how they persuaded the generals to take them there. Illus.Levy, Adrian is the author of 'Stone of Heaven : The Secret History of Imperial Green Jade', published 2004 under ISBN 9780756772444 and ISBN 0756772443.