Where are the four national stones of China produced?

Four national stones: Shoushan stone in Fujian, Qingtian stone in Zhejiang, bloodstone in Changhua and Bahrain stone in Inner Mongolia.

Shoushan Stone is produced in Shoushan Village, Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, with a history of 1500 years. It is famous for making good use of stone texture and natural color. There are many kinds, including tiankeng, puddle and mountain pit, with more than 1000 product names.

Qingtian Stone is produced in the mountain pass and Fangshan area of qingtian county, Zhejiang Province. There are four caves: Fengmen, Guanhong, Shi Yao and Baiyang. Qingtian stone is delicate, clean and easy to carve, with moderate brittleness and hardness. You can get the charm of the knife and pen when you print it. Wen Peng, the founder of Ming and Qing schools, strongly advocated the use of Qingtian stone printing. Since then, it has become more and more popular for literati to engrave seals with Qingtian stone.

Changhua fossils are produced in Changhua Town, Lin 'an City, Zhejiang Province. Its mining began in the Ming Dynasty and flourished in the Qing Dynasty, with a long history. The stone is tough and dense, and its color is calm and restrained. It has various colors, such as red, yellow, white, gray, black, purple, brown, bean green and so on. Mainly grayish white, with few solid colors mixed with many colors. White, named Bai Changhua, has many changes such as milky white, scallion white and pink white. The best kind has high crystallinity and good water permeability, and is in the form of glass crystals, which is called glass glue and has a unique style. Gray is called gray changhua, light gray and dark gray, slightly transparent, delicate and bright, and named lotus root jelly and ox horn jelly respectively. Yellow is called Huang Changhua, or Changhua Tianhuang, mostly khaki and milky yellow, with fine texture and silk thread in the middle. There are many people with stone skins, and their external characteristics are similar to those of Shoushan Tianhuang, but the mountains are moist.

balin stone

Balin stone is produced in Balin Right Banner, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, hence the name Balin stone, also known as Inner Mongolia stone and Chifeng stone. Balinshi became famous late, and it has only been officially developed and utilized for more than 30 years. At first, it was only used as the raw material of craft stone carving, and it was used to make seals after being appraised by experts and tried by seal carvers. At that time, the stone merchants in Qingtian transported them from Inner Mongolia to Qingtian, carved buttons and exported them to Japan, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan via Shanghai. Because of its high quality and low price, it is beneficial to playing with knives, so it is favored by printers. Bahrain stone was not noticed by collectors when it first appeared in large quantities, and it gradually attracted attention until the vein dried up and good stones were hard to find.