A man and his precious stones
By Wang Zhen
2016-01-20
At a time when many people are saving every penny they can to buy a new car or a bigger house, one man in Jilin province has been looking everywhere and blowing every penny he ever saved on a collection of carved stones, and not just any stones, but especially those from the Liao (916-1125) and Jin (1115-1234) dynasties.
But how he got this way from back when he had a wealthier urban lifestyle and an "iron rice bowl" job, something that practically everybody in northeastern China would have admired, in 1997, is an interesting story.
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Jia Bingshan blows the snow off the surface of a hitching post. [Photo by Wang Zhendong/365jilin.com] |
The 54-year-old Jia Bingshan says he's always been a sort of loner and after finishing a stint in the military at the age of 21, he went to work in Nong'an which had been a political, economic and military center for both the Liao and Jin dynasties, but became a small county near the city of Changchun. Jia had an old habit of frequenting flea markets and farm houses and, one day, got a stone said to be from the New Stone Age, his first purchase of that king and the start of his large collection and interest in carved stones.
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Badly worn stone tablet against the wall. [Photo by Wang Zhendong/365jilin.com] |
He figures that he probably has enough stones to join Jilin's newly-minted millionaires if he decided to sell the collection, but has kept them all in one big courtyard in a small village in the county, in the hope that these relics can help explain Liao and Jin history. Still, the question lingers: what possible reason could he have for this set of values?
