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There is a natural ore - flint. This ore is very difficult to find because it must contain a certain amount of metal composition. Flint is usually made of artificial alloy, but in the 80s, many real flints were unearthed in the area of Changle Fangshan in Changle County.
This ore was discovered by an old man herding sheep when he picked up a stone with sharp horns, hard and deep blue in a ravine. He used the stone to rub the fire sickle to light the flame, and some children also picked up some stones the size of eggs while swimming in the river. Therefore, the people of Changle County called this stone "blue flint".
As soon as the news spread, some outsiders began to buy these "blue flints" one after another. The locals didn't know what they were buying these shady stones for, but as the number grew, the locals became suspicious and asked someone to identify them.
The result was shocking: it turned out that these "blue flints" were all precious sapphires! Sapphire is a precious gemstone with a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale, ranking alongside diamonds, rubies and emeralds among the world's top four gemstones. In gemstone culture, sapphires give meaning to wisdom and auspiciousness with their mysterious and dreamy colors, while also symbolizing romantic love.
Changle's sapphire mines can be divided into primary and secondary mines, and after thousands of years of crustal movement, these wild ores have gradually separated and distributed in nearby ravines and riverbeds.
Since the locals don't know anything about sapphires, they lose many of Changle's sapphires and miss out on the opportunity to make a big profit.
In 1985, the relevant departments began to pay attention to the loss of sapphires and strengthened the management of sapphires. In recent years, Changle established the country's first county-level gemstone association, and in 1993 established a large-scale jewelry professional wholesale market (China Baocheng), and a series of retail processing industries have gradually developed.
According to geological data, in the area of Changle County, which covers an area of 450 square kilometers, hundreds of millions of carats of sapphires are deposited. This number is indeed surprising, and as a result, Changle County has become the home of sapphires in the true sense of the word.
So, why does Changle County have so many sapphires?
Located in the middle of the Shandong Peninsula, Changle County is an ancient county seat with a history of more than 3,000 years. In Changle County, there are ancient volcanic groups dating back 18 million years and 212 ancient cultural sites. In ancient times, volcanic activity was frequent, forming batches of ore. Here, in addition to sapphire, there is a wide variety of ores, such as 2 billion tons of limestone, 150 million tons of flux limestone, 1.4 billion tons of cement and chemical limestone, 450 million tons of building stone limestone, basalt, wood fish stone, coal, clay, placer gold, etc. However, Changle County is best known for sapphire, a precious gemstone that makes Changle County a famous gemstone town.