In recent years, the supernatural stones produced in Sichuan Province have become popular for the stone collecting circles by the precious exquisiteness. The stone collection becomes the fond thing of the common people, besides the traditional intelligentsia and integrates into the material culture life of the old and young. The trades on the fantastic stones appear as a sudden emergency of a new force and push the artistic curiosities created by the nature to the market.

Supernatural stones are the general designation of exquisite stones, aragonite, tributary stones, fancy stones and recordative stones, as the natural stone artworks bearing high collecting, ornamental and exchangeable values. The suiseki appreciating culture in Sichuan Province has a long history and there is an ancient saying of mountains will not stand lofty without stones, water is not clear without stones, gardens are not graceful without stones and homes are not elegant without stones. A wonderful supernatural stone is considered as a poem with no words, an imperishable painting and a silent song.

There are numerous rolling mountains and interlacing rivers inside Sichuan Province, which serve as the automatic and natural production line of supernatural stones. For hundreds of millions of years, the crustal plates collided with each other constant during movement, as a result, the rock gravels rolled into the rivers and be carried away by water, and become the countless wonderful cobbles in different shapes. Scholar's Stones will appear from the river every autumn after the water wanes and they will show people their beauty. Such stones, which are hard in nature with a good flushing effect, are abundant in terms of material feel: they show extreme individuality under their quietness while being abstruse and supernatural in water. It seems that each stone is a book that people will never understand completely.

The supernatural stones produced in Sichuan Province characterize various breeds and ample reserves, almost covering all stone breeds of fancy stones. But the most charming breed is the well-known pattern stone produced in the Yangtze River, with three major strong points shown as below:

The first is the wonderful shape. The suseok has regular shape, smooth and flat pattern as a result of sufficient grinding.

(Continue...)

Photo by Erzhuzhai