Luc Yen Gem Market - Yen Bai

Gems as the products are displayed in groups on the table. Gems maybe have been operated or being original. However, no matter what kinds of gem, they all look brilliant. 

Luc Yen gem market is opened at a beautiful corner of a lake in Yen The town. The market works in just several hours in every morning. Depending on reasons and weather, the market can be taken place sooner or later, but at about 6.30 am there are sellers in the market.  They slowly arrange their stalls that are not complicated but very simple. The market contains about thirty to forty stalls; all sellers are female who almost has attached to the market since its establishment.

Luc Yen is the only destination in all over the country where there is gem picture making career. Visit the place, people can have a chance to discover the gem picture making career as well as to contemplate the specious pictures which cost hundreds of millions VND.

Gems as the products are displayed in groups on the table. Gems maybe have been operated or being original. However, no matter what kinds of gem, they all look brilliant. According to the sellers, gems are gathered from the persons who have already gone to the mountains; if have time, craftsmen will operate the gems to make pendants of rings, necklaces, earrings, etc… Gems are also used as materials for making gem picture, which are sold in the unit of kilogram or gram.

Each of blue, red, purple, yellow, white, black gems having different sizes and shapes is supervised and considered by the customers who are conversant with gem. The prices are announced depending on the type of gem which can be ten thousands, hundreds of thousand or a million, tens of millions dong. However, the succession of transaction is decided by the bargaining process.    

Besides gem traders and makers seeking for materials, there are many people who have heard about the gem market then come to this to see and to buy some products as the souvenirs.  After two to three hours, the market is closed. According to the sellers, in different days, there can be transaction costing tens, hundreds of millions dong or just several millions.  

The owner of a gem stall in Luc Yen market said that every early morning, hundreds of local residents went to the forest, walking along the stream, picking up each gem. After a long time, the gem became rare so people had to go further to the caves to gather it. Nowadays, people find it hard to seek for gem in the cave; many of them must use machines to dig deeply on the mountains then wash the soil for gem.

If people find out original sapphire, ruby gems (which are big, transparent, right color, not cracked), they can sell them with the price of several hundred millions dong. However, they usually get the color gems including ruby, sapphire which have lower quality, being crushed and small, used for making picture. To get the suitable color gems (especially black gems for drawing hair, blue ones for illustrating the color of water), they must wander on the mountains in a month.

For directly seeing the gem exploiting fields, it takes about 30 minutes riding motorbike. Different from gold field, the gem fields locates scattered over the mountains and forests. The local residents freely exploit the gem, that’s why there is a gem market which is also the supplying source for the gem picture making career. The visitors also can pick up the gem themselves.