Strictly For Ladies! Freshwater Cultured Pearl Factory, Wuxi

Just like what people love to do nowadays, ‘crossover’ is what I’m going to do here. While starting my travelogue of my travel to Phuket, I’m also finalising here my previous travel experience to China… After visiting the Three Kingdom City of Wuxi in the 7th morning of my packaged tour to South Yangtze China, we continued our schedule to visit another factory in Wuxi before our lunch (Good or bad lunch would depend on our spending in the factory 🙁 ). This time round was a pearl factory in Wuxi. Frankly, I haven’t heard of any famous piece of gem that came from Wuxi…

(Above display shows “The legend of Pearl”). One of the most coveted gems or ornament for ladies, pearls are round shaped gems of various sizes without blemish and with high sheen or luster. They are normally made into a necklace with string of pearls or pearls in combination with other gemstones like rubies or diamonds. Pearls are categorised into 2 types by its origin, natural and cultured pearl. Pearls are an organic gem produced by mollusks, oyster, mussels, conch and abalone. They are normally in whitish colour with some tint of pink, cream or silver except fresh water cultured pearl which would have more colour choices.

Natural pearls are created in mollusks. They create pearls to protect themselves from sand, parasites and other minute foreign objects. These natural pearls are mostly found in the Persian Gulf and are referred to as oriental pearls. Natural salt-water pearls are among the most coveted in the world but have virtually ceased to exist due to pollution and lack of natural supply. On the other hand, cultured pearl growing began with a patented process invented by Kokichi Mikimoto, the founder of Mikimoto and Company, one of the world’s finest pearl growers and sellers. A bead is surgically planted in Akoya oysters to create the irritant that causes oysters to create a pearl. The oysters are then put back in the sea enclosed in baskets. They stay in the baskets from one to three years to produce sizable pearls with sufficient sheen.

Cultured pearls cultivated in Taihu Lake of Wuxi are of freshwater type produced by mollusks. They can be grown in a variety of colors including pink, orange, mauve and golden colors and are usually smaller in size. Their shapes vary from round, baroque, button shaped, drop shapes and irregular shapes.

As usual, when we arrived at the pearl factory in Wuxi, we were brought to a counter where the manager showed us how pearls are getting out from an oyster in seconds. The below photos showed the sequence…

Opening up an oyster with ordinary knife…

… scoop out plenty of pearls from only one oyster…

… then start scooping in money, left with a dying oyster.

After that, it’s our free time to shop around and sales persons approched us from all angles! 🙁 Strings of pearls were laid and displayed in front of us. As usual again, like the rest of the other factories visit which I considered them as travel hoaxes, we had to wait for others if we were not interested in pearls… I mean interested in buying pearls! The tour guide would tell you this: “Take your time, our VIP, your lunch later would be at the grand restaurant.. upstair only!” No where to run!

All kinds of pearl ornamentations are displayed on the counters to attract you. They will tell you how good quality are their pearls but never told you they are cultivated fresh water pearls which are normally cheaper…

Other than jewelries made from pearls, they sell cosmetics produced with pearl powder as well. We bought some pearl powders as Chinese medication believe that it could heal fever or at least reduce heat of children. My wife and sister bought some pearl day and night facial cream as well! In order to have a better lunch, my niece bought a pendent! Haha… 🙂

I’m no expert in pearls. I can’t even differentiate whether they are considered as high or low quality or value. So I posted some photos here for you ladies to judge whether Wuxi Taihu Lake Pearls are what you think good or bad pieces of feminine beloved ornamental gems….

UPDATED: Click HERE to view the original High Resolution file of the above photos via Flickr.

Satisfied, ladies?

This was our last destination in Wuxi. We left Wuxi after our lunch (Thanks, our fellow tour members. Because you spent enough money on pearls, we had a good lunch there!) and travelled back to our first city of our packaged tour, Shanghai. If you love this story, subscribe to my RSS feeds for more free updated stories of my trip to China. – Travel Feeder.