The predawn jade market attracts wholesale buyers.

The predawn jade market adjacent to Matian Park in Sihiu, Guangdong Province, is packed with traders at three in the morning. Lights stab through a 1,000 m stretch of the park, causing jade on implausible plastic plates to glitter in the dark.

Six or seven hundred traders are busy bargaining with customers or spraying water on the jade to make items stand out. Jade in all shapes, such as Buddhas, animals, flowers, birds and fans, are on sale.

There are also predawn markets in other parts of Guangdong, but most of those sell clothing, vegetables, seafood and flowers. The one in Sihui is the only predawn market strictly for jade in the province.

Buses, mini-buses and motorbikes are parked a short distance from the market. Customers from Guangzhou, Foshan and elsewhere arrive incessantly. Most traders stop in Sihui the night before and make their way to the market before dawn. After purchasing the goods of their choice, they catch a bus for home in Guangzhou 60 km (about an hour) away. The goods they bought wholesale could be resold the same day.

Meanwhile back in Sihui, at eight in the morning after the crowd has dispersed, the market is cleaned and turned into a sidewalk once again.

The market opens at three am.

Choosing jade by night light.

Sihui is situated to the west of central Guangdong and to the northeast of Zhaoqing. It lies in the lower reaches of the Xijiang, Beijiang and Suijiang rivers and forms part of the Pearl River Delta economic belt.

The predawn jade market first emerged in the early 1990s. In those days, jade workers would sell crudely-processed jade on the roadside to attract people passing through. Not long thereafter, they started setting up stalls before dawn. Eventually they started doing business at three and would be gone by eight in the morning.

The local government decided to set up a more formalised predawn jade market, as more and more people arrived to do business. Thanks to its very reasonable management fees, the market has been enthusiastically attended by jade dealers and soon attracted buyers from various other parts of the province.

Processing jade from the China-Myanmar border

Sihui does not actually produce jade, but local people buy jade from the China-Myanmar border or from places like Nanyang in Henan and Lijiang in Yunnan, for processing. As the traditional stone carving factories in the towns of Jingkou and Qingtang in Sihui saw that jade was a more profitable business, many stone carvers turned to jade processing.

In the mid-1960s, the city set up two jade processing plants and trained up a number of jade carvers with the help of Southern Jade Carving Factory, in Guangdong. More and more people have since turned to jade, which gradually evolved into a booming local industry.

Sihui owes its jade industry to the support of the local government, which developed the market. The government allocated a plot in the city for the building of a 3,000m-long jade street, which could accommodate some 600 shops in 1995, before building the jade city on the same street in 1998.

Today, Sihui is capable of processing a wide range of jade items of different grades. Its technological level is among the best in the country and many of its products are exported to various parts of the world.

That's a deal.

Wide range of jade items available.

Output value exceeds HK$754 million

Sihui's jade street.

There are over 800 jade dealers, 300 jade processing factories and 2,500 household jade workshops in Sihui, employing over 60,000 people. It processes over 1,000 tonnes of uncut jade each year, with annual output value exceeding Rmb800 million (HK$754 million) and annual sales exceeding Rmb700 million (HK$660 million).

Today, it is one of the four major jade markets in Guangdong, as well as being the largest wholesale market for jade in the province.

In order to encourage more people to engage in the jade processing industry, the local government promulgated regulations for Encouraging the Development of Individually-owned and Private Undertakings and tried to attract entrepreneurs to increase investment, enlarge their scale of operation and enhance their processing ability by offering incentives in production, marketing, export and fees.

The authorities also give some of the larger jade processing enterprises assistance in seeking import and export rights, expanding their jade exports and increasing their foreign exchange earning capability.

The Sihui Chamber of Commerce for Jades was officially inaugurated in March 2002. The pedestrian shopping street for jades built in recent years has become a major tourist attraction.

The city's application for use of the title "China's Hometown for Jade Processing" has been approved. This will further increase the reputation of Sihui jade and contribute to the city's development into a leading jade market in China and Southeast Asia.

from special correspondent Huang Yaohui, Guangzhou