Where is jade found? Jade mines and sources around the world

Jade is found in dozens of countries, but jewelry-grade jade comes from only a handful of places: jadeite mainly from the Hpakant area of northern Myanmar, and nephrite mainly from British Columbia in Canada, Siberia in Russia and northwestern China. Smaller sources include Guatemala and Japan for jadeite, and New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and the United States, mainly Wyoming, Alaska, California and Washington, for nephrite. Every piece of real jade jewelry we sell starts in one of two of those places: Hpakant for jadeite and Xinjiang for nephrite.

Many people assume jade comes from China. China has worked jade for about 9,000 years and is the biggest jade market today, but nearly all of that history is nephrite. Jadeite only began arriving from Burma in quantity in the 18th century, and most of the jadeite sold in China still comes from Myanmar. Jadeite and nephrite are two different stones that form in different rock, so their main sources are mostly different places, though a few countries, such as Russia and the United States, have both.

Where jade is found, country by country

Myanmar produces by far the most jadeite, and British Columbia, Siberia and China produce most of the world's nephrite. Past that ranking, reliable numbers run out. The production figures that exist come from different years and measure different things, some counting tonnes mined and others tonnes sold, and many producing areas publish nothing. Percentages such as "70 percent of the world's jadeite" circulate widely online, and I have never seen one traced to a real measurement, so the table leaves them out.

Instead, the table shows where each kind of jade is found, the colors you mostly see from each source, and how each source shows up in the trade. China is the biggest market for both stones, and the Chinese trade sorts material by source names that turn up in listings and move prices there. What each color means and how it is valued is a separate subject, covered in our guide to jade colors.

Which country has the best jade?

For jadeite, Myanmar is the main source of top-grade material: the finest translucent green, the color the trade calls imperial, has traditionally come from Hpakant. For nephrite, the answer depends on color. Chinese buyers rank Xinjiang first for white, with the best from the Hetian region and Qiemo County, while Canada and Russia supply most of the spinach green.

Knowing the country narrows the odds and nothing more. A cloudy, cracked piece from Hpakant is worth less than a clean, well-colored piece from a smaller deposit, so color, texture, translucency and cracks still decide what a particular stone is worth. For how the three best-known sources compare in color, texture and price, see Guatemalan, Burmese and Hetian jade compared.

Where is jade found in nature?

Jade is found in a few kinds of rock along old plate boundaries. Jadeite occurs in bodies of serpentinite that rose from deep subduction zones, where one tectonic plate sank beneath another. Nephrite forms at shallower depth, where hot fluids alter rock along the edges of serpentinite or in dolomitic marble. How jade is formed follows each process step by step.

Jadeite needs more to go right. It crystallizes at high pressure but fairly low temperature, conditions found deep in a subduction zone, and then it has to be carried back up inside serpentinite before anyone can reach it. Both steps have to happen in the same place, so jadeite turns up in few places and gem-quality jadeite in fewer still. Nephrite's two settings are far more common, so nephrite turns up in many more places.

Jade is found at no single depth. Some of the most important jade is picked up at or near the surface, in boulder fields and river gravels, while at Hpakant the jade-bearing gravels lie under layers of rock that the mines strip away bench by bench.

Can you find jade in rivers or on beaches?

Jade can be found in rivers and on some beaches, and several of the best-known sources are exactly this kind. Jade is one of the toughest natural materials, far harder to break than the rock around it. When glaciers and rivers grind a deposit down, the weaker rock wears away to sand and gravel while the jade survives as boulders and pebbles, so moving water ends up concentrating it:

• Myanmar: most Hpakant jadeite comes from boulders in old river gravels.
• Xinjiang: the prized river pebbles come from the Yurungkash and Karakash rivers.
• British Columbia: many of the nephrite boulders in the north were carried there by glaciers.
• New Zealand: pounamu turns up mostly as boulders and pebbles in rivers and on West Coast beaches.
• California: at Jade Cove, most of the nephrite is found as pebbles and larger stones on the shore and seabed.

Where can you find jade in the United States?

Jade in the United States is almost all nephrite, found mainly in Wyoming, Alaska, California and Washington, and most of it goes to lapidaries and collectors rather than to the jewelry trade.

The hard part of finding jade yourself is telling it apart from everything else on the ground. Each of these places is full of serpentine and other green rock that looks like jade when it's wet, and serpentine is also the usual lookalike in rivers and on beaches. A smooth green pebble proves nothing on its own. Our guide to what jade rock looks like goes through the checks that narrow it down, and only testing settles it.

Where does jadeite come from? Inside the Hpakant jade mines

Jadeite comes mainly from Hpakant, a mining district in Kachin State in northern Myanmar and the traditional and most important source of gem-quality jadeite. Hpakant supplies every grade, from everyday commercial material to the finest green, and Guatemala has become the second-largest producer. Mogok, far to the south, is often confused with it, but Mogok is Myanmar's ruby and sapphire town and not a jade source.

I have bought jadeite rough at Hpakant since 2016, at six of the district's main pits: Old Hpakant, Mowanji, Huika, Muna, Dagudi and Moxisha. Each gives rough with its own skin and character, from Mowanji's shiny black skin to Muna's white, salt-like one, and I describe them pit by pit in our guide to jadeite and Burmese jade. Very little of that rough is cut from solid bedrock. Most of it is dug from boulders that broke away from their parent rock long ago, and the inside of each boulder can only be judged through a small polished window or a cut face, which is why buying rough always carries risk.

How is jade mined at Hpakant?

Jade at Hpakant is mined from open pits on an industrial scale. The scene I saw most often on buying trips between 2016 and 2019, when large licensed companies still worked much of the district, was at the Mowanji pit. Standing at the rim, I could see three benches cut into the pit, each with a big Volvo excavator whose bucket could hold two grown men, and loaded dump trucks grinding up and down dirt roads cut into the hillside. In the dry season the machines ran around the clock, and the dust and diesel smell carried across the whole hilltop. It looked nothing like the picture many people have of men digging tunnels by hand.

The companies drilled and blasted to loosen the overburden, then stripped the ground layer by layer with machines, following the jade-bearing gravel down. Hpakant's rainy season lasts about six months, and the mud roads are then too soft for heavy trucks, so in the dry months the machines rarely stopped. Each bench had its own sorters, who pulled aside anything with a skin that looked like jade. Large pieces with strong color were often bought on the spot by the mine owner or by big dealers living at the mines, and never reached the open market.

At Mowanji the mine tipped its waste every afternoon around four, for about half an hour, and the waste heap became the busiest place in the district. Freelance pickers, known locally as yemase, waited at the foot of the slope and climbed into the rock as it poured down, sifting the broken stone by hand for small pieces and color fragments the company had missed. Many wore cheap head lamps and stayed crouched in the rubble for hours. Their hands were covered in small cuts, and some tied old sponge to their shins against falling rock. By my last trips the companies were sorting far more thoroughly than before, so what was left was mostly small offcuts, and a whole small piece was a lucky find. For many local villagers it was still the main way to make a living.

How rough jadeite gets from the mine to the market

Rough jadeite passes through several hands between the pit and a jeweler. These are the routes I know from buying:

1. At the mine, the best material is kept back at the pit, and ordinary rough is loaded onto trucks and driven out.
2. In my experience, most ordinary rough goes by road to Mandalay, Myanmar's biggest market for rough jade, where small dealers and brokers trade every day. Some goes east toward Myitkyina and the Chinese border.
3. From there, rough is either shipped to China for cutting or cut locally into windowed or sawn pieces and resold, usually changing hands several times before it reaches a retailer.

What a boulder finally becomes depends on what cutting reveals. A block with clean, even color through a large volume can yield bangles; one where good color sits only in patches goes to cabochons for a jadeite ring and to small carvings.

Where else is jadeite found?

Jadeite is also found in Guatemala, Japan, Russia, Kazakhstan and California, but only Guatemala supplies the jewelry trade in any steady amount. Guatemalan jadeite comes from the Motagua River valley, the same source the Olmec and Maya carved. I have bought Guatemalan jadeite myself and keep a few pieces as samples: set beside Burmese material of a similar grade, the Guatemalan pieces I have bought usually sit on a grayer or bluer base, a difference far easier to see side by side than in a single stone. Japan's jadeite comes from the Itoigawa area of Niigata Prefecture, and Japanese mineralogists named it the country's national stone in 2016. Russia has jadeite in the Polar Urals, much of it ornamental grade. Geologists have recorded jadeite rock in still more places, including Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Greece, Iran and Papua New Guinea.

Where does nephrite come from?

Nephrite comes mainly from British Columbia, Siberia and northwestern China, with smaller sources from New Zealand to South Australia. For nephrite, the kind of rock it grew in says more about its color than the country does, because it forms in two settings:

Color follows the rock often enough to be a useful rule of thumb, though not a test. Cowell in South Australia is a marble-type deposit, yet its nephrite runs from green to black, and Siberia appears in both columns because it has both kinds of deposit. Colors, grades and meaning are covered in our nephrite jade guide.

Nephrite is mined differently from jadeite. In northern British Columbia, nephrite producers have described cutting boulders and outcrops apart with large diamond saws instead of blasting them, since blasting can crack the stone. In Xinjiang, mountain nephrite is quarried from deposits in places such as Qiemo and Yutian, while river pebbles are dug out of riverbeds and old river channels.

Where is jade found in Canada?

Canadian jade is nephrite, and almost all of it comes from British Columbia, with smaller finds in the Yukon. BC jade is spinach-green nephrite, sold in the Chinese trade as Canadian green (加碧). Like most green nephrite, it often carries small black spots, and how many spots a piece shows is one of the first things a buyer in China looks at.

Is jade still mined in British Columbia?

Jade is still mined in British Columbia. The 2024 order covers only the defined area in the northwest shown in the table, and jade mining elsewhere in the province is unaffected.

Where is jade found in China?

China's jade is nephrite, and most of it comes from Xinjiang, where the finest white material is mined in the Hetian region and Qiemo County and river pebbles are recovered from the rivers below the deposits. Qinghai, in the Kunlun Mountains, has large deposits of the same white, marble-type nephrite, and smaller deposits are worked in Liaoning, Guangxi and Guizhou. Most white Xinjiang nephrite ends up as bangles, beads and carvings, or as the pendant on a jade necklace.

Two distinctions in the Chinese trade matter to a buyer:

• River pebbles or mountain material. River pebbles, called zi liao (籽料, "seed material"), were tumbled for a long time in the rivers below the deposits and wear a natural skin. The trade pays a premium for them over shan liao (山料), mountain material quarried from the rock, and that premium is why tumbled and stained mountain material is sometimes passed off as river pebbles.
• The name on the certificate. A Chinese certificate that reads 和田玉, Hetian jade, is naming the material, nephrite, not the place. Under China's national standard, nephrite from Qinghai, Russia or South Korea is Hetian jade too.

China also calls several other stones jade, such as the serpentine of Xiuyan in Liaoning and the multi-mineral Dushan jade of Henan. Those, and the color varieties of Hetian nephrite, are sorted out in our guide to the types of Chinese jade.

Is jade only found in China?

Jade is not only found in China. China has large nephrite deposits but no commercial jadeite, and nephrite is mined across the world, from Canada and Russia to New Zealand and Australia. Guatemalan jadeite has reached Chinese markets in small amounts since about 2000, and in more varieties in recent years.

What is the largest piece of jade ever found?

The largest piece of jade on record is a 577-tonne lens of nephrite found in the Yukon Territory of Canada in July 1992, listed by Guinness World Records. A lens is a lens-shaped body of jade still inside the surrounding rock, not a loose boulder. Giant finds come from other places too. In 2016, miners at Hpakant uncovered a jadeite boulder reported at somewhere between about 170 and 210 tonnes. China's famous "jade king" boulder from Xiuyan in Liaoning, carved into a giant Buddha at Anshan, is mostly serpentine: jade in the Chinese sense, but neither nephrite nor jadeite.

For a buyer, a giant block says little about value. What matters is how much clean, translucent, evenly colored material can be cut from it, and a very large block usually holds enough cracks, color changes and coarse patches to send most of it to carvings or display stones rather than jewelry. Once quality is equal, size works the other way: a fine green jade bangle is worth far more than a small cabochon of the same green, because the bangle has to come from a clean block many times larger. How color, translucency and size set the price is explained in our jade price guide.

Where was jade first found?

Jade was first worked in several parts of the world independently, each time from a local source, and the oldest known tradition is China's: jade objects found at Xiaonanshan in Heilongjiang, in northeast China, date to about 9,000 years ago.

Jade suited all of these cultures for the same physical reasons. Without metal tools it took enormous labor to grind and polish, and once finished it lasted for generations, which made it a natural choice for objects meant to be kept, traded or buried with the dead.

Is there jade in the UK, India, Mexico, Indonesia or Thailand?

None of these countries supplies jade to the international jewelry trade. The UK, India and Mexico have no commercial jade deposits, Thailand is not known for any, and Indonesia's best-known local stone is only partly jade.

Can you tell where a piece of jade came from?

You can't tell where a piece of jade came from by looking at it, and a standard identification report doesn't say either. Identification reports name the material and any treatment. Origin is a separate, specialized test that a few labs offer only for certain jadeite, and most jadeite on the market has never been through it. Anyone who claims to read origin from a photo is guessing. Our article on why home tests are not enough explains what a lab can and cannot confirm.

For most pieces, origin rests on the seller's word. When American customers ask us about it, the question usually comes in one of four forms. In order of how often I hear them:

1. "Is this jadeite from Burma?" This is the most common. Most of the American customers I talk to still say Burma rather than Myanmar.
2. "Is this Burmese jadeite, or Guatemalan?" Customers who have read up ask this because they worry one is sold as the other.
3. "Can you verify this is from Myanmar?" This comes from customers who care about traceability and want proof.
4. "Is this from Hpakant?" A few experienced buyers go straight to the mining district.

I'm Hong, the founder of BMjade, and my answer is the same each time. All of our jadeite is natural Burmese jadeite. We don't sell Guatemalan jadeite; I keep a few Guatemalan pieces only to show customers how the two materials differ. Our nephrite is Xinjiang material, bought through suppliers who specialize in it. Every piece we sell ships with an NGTC identification certificate, and for jadeite, from a bangle to a pair of jade stud earrings, the certificate confirms natural jadeite with no bleaching, polymer or dye. "Burmese" and "Xinjiang" are statements we make ourselves: "Burmese" rests on rough I buy myself at Hpakant, and "Xinjiang" on what our suppliers tell us about where their material comes from. Neither is a lab finding.

Sources

• Hughes, Richard W., Olivier Galibert, George Bosshart, Fred Ward, Thet Oo, Mark Smith, Tay Thye Sun and George E. Harlow. "Burmese Jade: The Inscrutable Gem." Gems & Gemology, Spring 2000.
• Huang, Zhaoying, Tao Chen, Jinyu Zheng and Zebin Xu. "“Ice Jade” from Guatemala." Gems & Gemology, Spring 2024.
• Gao, Kong, Ting Fang, Taijin Lu, Yan Lan, Yong Zhang, Yuanyuan Wang and Yayun Chang. "Hydrogen and Oxygen Stable Isotope Ratios of Dolomite-Related Nephrite: Relevance for Its Geographic Origin and Geological Significance." Gems & Gemology, Summer 2020.
• Hsu, Tao, Kirk Makepeace, Andrew Lucas and Nikki Makepeace. "The Nephrite Jade Road: Evolution of the Green Nephrite Market." GIA, 2015.
• Province of British Columbia. "Jade mining closure northwest B.C." Order of May 10, 2024. Accessed October 2026.