Amber

Amber

　　Amber

　　Natural amber, produced in the West Open-Pit Mine of Fushun, is a long-famous natural specialty of Fushun, China. According to archaeologists and geologists, about fifty million years ago, dense forests baked under the intense sun, and resin slowly seeped from oily trees. Through geological changes, this resin was buried deep underground and, over the course of millennia, fossilized into what we now call amber. The resulting amber comes in various colors including yellow, brown, black, white, and mottled, and ranges from transparent to translucent. Amber containing insects is extremely rare and considered a precious treasure.

　　Carved amber products include a variety of designs such as necklaces, Buddhist prayer beads, Buddha statues, small animals, masks, and reverse glass paintings. Currently, over 80% of the products are amber necklaces and Buddhist prayer beads. Necklaces come in shapes like round beads, diamonds, octagons, cylinders, rectangles, flat circles, and ovals. These items are exported to Southeast Asia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, as well as Europe and America.

　　Amber also has medicinal properties, offering benefits such as calming the nerves, warding off evil, clearing the lungs, and aiding digestion. Li Shizhen, in his Compendium of Materia Medica, noted that amber soothes the organs and calms the spirit, drives away evil spirits, dissolves blood stasis, and can be used in over ten types of traditional Chinese medicine formulations.