Chinese cinnabar.(mercury-mining region) From: The Mineralogical Record | Date: January 1, 2005| Author: Liu, Guanghua | COPYRIGHT 2005 The Mineralogical, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

For thousands of years a mercury-mining region centered on Wanshan, in Guizhou Province, has produced cinnabar ore, ornamental and "medicinal" cinnabar, and cinnabar crystal specimens which clearly are the world's finest. The reappearance of Chinese cinnabar on the collector market in the late 1980's was the vanguard of the present abundance of Chinese collector minerals; at that time, as now, cinnabar specimens were coming in a variety of habits from several distinct occurrences i...