Jadeite Rough
Thirty taels.
Shen Jingchuan did the math in his head.
The mirror was the old one that hung in his bathroom. It had probably cost less than ten yuan, and he'd used it for years.
Thirty taels of silver would be three taels of gold, or 150 grams. Even if the gold here wasn't very pure, he could still get at least 100,000 yuan for it back home. That was already a sky-high price.
But he didn't agree right away. He merely frowned, looking less than satisfied.
The shopkeeper's heart sank at the sight of his expression, and he hurriedly added:
"Fifty taels! I really can't go any higher, young master! This thing breaks too easily. I don't even dare transport it, so I can only sell it locally and wait for a buyer. That'll tie up my capital!"
"All right."
Shen Jingchuan nodded as if he were reluctantly agreeing:
"Fifty taels it is. You seem like an honest man, so I'll let you have it."
As if granted a pardon, the shopkeeper hurriedly set the mirror aside with great care, then turned to count out the silver, afraid Shen Jingchuan might change his mind.
Only after he had pushed fifty taels in neatly arranged silver notes across the counter did he breathe a sigh of relief. He cradled the mirror like a treasure and locked it in a cabinet in the back room.
When he came out again, he looked at Shen Jingchuan differently.
The man looked young, yet every object he casually brought out was a rarity. He was definitely no ordinary traveling merchant.
Beaming, he said, "Young master, if you ever have more fine goods like these, you must think of me first! I'll definitely give you a fair price!"
"All right."
Shen Jingchuan put the silver away and cupped his hands. "I'll take my leave."
He walked out of the general store with the silver tucked away: one tael for the white sugar, fifty for the lighter, and fifty for the mirror. This trip had netted him a hundred taels of silver.
With a hundred taels in silver notes tucked away, Shen Jingchuan left the general store. Instead of hurrying back to his lodgings, he strolled down the street, working out the numbers in his head.
There wasn't much point in taking silver back. With a chance to travel between two worlds, he had to make the most of the price difference.
Gold was certainly a safe bet, but there was a limit to the profit. He might as well look for collectibles and jade; they commanded high premiums in the modern world and were easy to sell.
As he walked, he glanced at the shops lining the street and saw a sign ahead reading "Treasure Gathering Hall." It looked like a collectibles and antiques shop, so he stepped inside.
Display shelves stood along both sides of the shop, paintings and calligraphy hung on the walls, and porcelain vases and inkstones sat on the tables. The mingled scents of sandalwood and ink greeted him.
The shopkeeper, a man with a short beard, hurried forward to greet him.
"Young master, would you like to see paintings and calligraphy, or porcelain? Everything in my little shop is a genuine, fine piece."
Shen Jingchuan didn't answer. He first looked over the paintings and calligraphy along the wall. There were landscape scrolls and hanging paintings of flowers and birds, all accomplished in brushwork and composition, but as he looked, something suddenly struck him.
Wait. This is a fictional dynasty. There's no corresponding dynasty or reign title in history.
No matter how good these paintings and calligraphy were, their artists, schools, and dates could not be verified in the modern world. If he took them back, never mind selling them—no one would even recognize them.
They might even land him in trouble. Perfectly good "antiques" that didn't match any dynasty could at best be dismissed as high-quality fakes; at worst, they might bring the relevant authorities to his door, and he wouldn't be able to explain where they came from.
Paintings and calligraphy were a dead end.
He shook his head and looked away, turning to the jade ornaments and pendants on the display shelf beside him.
Paintings and calligraphy depended on provenance and dynasty, but jade couldn't be the same—the quality of the material itself couldn't be faked.
"Interested in jade, young master?" Seeing him turn, the shopkeeper hurried after him, all smiles. "We have mutton-fat jade plaques, pebble-jade pieces for handling, and green jade pendants brought up from the south. They're all carefully selected, fine material."
Shen Jingchuan knew nothing about jade, and he had no intention of pretending to be an expert and embarrassing himself. Following the principle of asking when he didn't know, he pointed at a translucent emerald-green jadeite pendant on the shelf and got straight to the point.
"How much for this one?"
The shopkeeper glanced at the icy jadeite plaque with floating patterns and thought to himself:
He looks well dressed, but it turns out he's a poor scholar. This green jade isn't a rarity around here at all. Southern caravans only bring it over for its novelty, and wealthy households buy it as a trinket for the women in their families. It's worth far less than mutton-fat jade. He casually said:
"Young master, you have a good eye. This is a top-quality green jade plaque, three taels of silver."
Three taels of silver? Fifteen grams of gold. Even at a low purity, at six or seven hundred yuan a gram, that's ten thousand yuan. Shen Jingchuan calculated frantically in his head.
This jadeite pendant, with its seemingly decent translucency, came to 10,000 yuan? In a modern shopping mall, well—he didn't know how much it would cost either.
His gaze swept downward and suddenly landed on a corner of the shop. A piece of jade rough the size of a human head leaned there, its grayish-brown outer crust coarse and thick, with a palm-sized window ground open on one side.
Light from outside shone across it at an angle, and the exposed material in the window was clear and translucent.
(This was top-grade glass-type jadeite, its interior suffused with a rich, even, true vivid green. Its emerald color looked ready to drip, and it was as lustrous as a pool of frozen emerald water, captivating at a glance.)
But Shen Jingchuan didn't know that.
He knew nothing about mining sites, texture and translucency, or color bands. He simply thought it was big enough, and the color at the window was true and astonishingly translucent. It looked better than the pendant from before.
He lifted his chin and pointed at the rough.
"What about this one?"
The shopkeeper followed his finger, and his heart immediately bloomed with delight.
A southern caravan had brought this piece of jadeite rough over as ballast last year. It was certainly large, but people here didn't appreciate it.
People only prized mutton-fat jade and real gold and silver. Green jade rough wasn't worth much to begin with; only after it was made into objects could the labor earn some money.
Green jade ornaments didn't sell well in the first place, so the rough had never been worked and had been left piled off to one side, taking up space for nothing.
It had cost him only a little over thirty taels of silver, but his capital had been tied up in it all this time.
The young master before him was clearly a layman. The shopkeeper's eyes darted, and he deliberately frowned, putting on a pained expression.
"Young master, what a fine eye! This is the best piece of rough in the whole batch. Look at the window: solid green and excellent translucency. Once you take it home and cut it, you can make more than a dozen bangles, and the rest can be made into plaques and ring faces. That'll be worth a fortune."
He paused and gritted his teeth, as if making a momentous decision.
"Tell you what: if you're serious about buying it, young master, you can take it away for a hundred taels of silver."
A hundred taels.
Shen Jingchuan quickly calculated in his head: a hundred taels of silver, converted to gold, would be worth a little over 300,000 yuan.
Such a large piece of jadeite with green in it looked to be in excellent condition. If he took it back to the modern world, and it happened to be some special type or shade of green, never mind 300,000—even tens of millions might not be enough to buy it.
Even if the stone turned out badly when cut, he wouldn't lose much with just the section exposed by the window.
But he didn't know the trade, and he didn't want to be taken for a fool. Following the simple principle of "cut the asking price in half," he said mildly:
"Fifty taels. If you'll sell it, I'll take it away now; if not, I'll go look elsewhere."
The shopkeeper's heart gave a thud.