About The Book
Seeing Red: A view from Inside the Ruby Trade is based on the author's first hand expe-rience working for one of Bangkok's largest gem trading companies. The book documents the ruby trade in Burma, Thailand, and Viet-nam. Called ma naw na ya in Burma-'Wish-fulfilling stones'-rubies are believed to grant their wearer's wishes. Both the trader's mod-ern-day mysteries and old traditions are the subject of this inside view.
About The Author
Carol Clark (pictured at a Burma gem emporium) has worked as a writer and editor in her native state of Texas, as well as in Hawaii, Thailand and Singapore. She currently lives in Atlanta, Geor-gia.
Introduction
The color red has always symbolized man's strongest passions. And no embodi-ment of red equals that of a first rate ruby. Mother Nature embues the finest rubies with a red fluorescent glow, so that the stone scintillates with fiery life, like a translucent, red-hot coal. Fine rubies are rare-far rarer than diamonds-and they tend to come from the blood-soaked soil of remote, beautiful and wartorn lands. Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam are three of the most important ruby producing regions in the world. The expert gem miners and traders of Thailand, enjoying the freedom and peace that these three countries lack, have benefited greatly from the riches of their neighbors. Some may call it exploitation. But the Thais think of it as business-business in its purest, most unregulated form, without taxes, without paperwork, without troublesome customs declarations. Bribes, smuggling and secrecy are the hall-marks of the ruby trade. Treachery and trickery run rampant in a business where one million dollars may be paid for a single stone. There is no legal recourse for those who are taken in by a high-quality synthetic ruby, or for those who fall prey to bandits or other misfortunes along the trail. The mining and trading of rough rubies is a complicated game and the best players are tough, canny, driven and compulsive gamblers. These men are almost always self made. In spite of low education, they are virtuosos when it comes to rubies. But they are not in the business for the love of the stones-they are addicted to the game. They are masters of a craft which requires ruthlessness alternating with the delicate touch of world-class diplomats. No matter how much power or money they amass, they skate on thin ice daily. This book describes the ruby trade of Southeast Asia, as I witnessed it during the four years I worked as the editor of a jewelry trade magazine in Bangkok, Thailand, from 1991 to 1994. Southeast Asia is evolving rapidly and I often felt that I was chronicling a disappearing way of life, especially when I interviewed the gem miners in the most remote areas. In spite of the many changes I have written this book in the present tense because I want readers to feel they are coming along for the ride, swept up by the age-old quest for rubies, just as I was myself. Joining the big-time Thai ruby miners and traders in the story are a host of other characters, including con artists and small-time dreamers, corrupt officials from brutal regimes, a born-again Christian from the Lisu hilltribe known for his strong-arm tactics when bargaining for stones, an opium warlord battling for legitimacy by opening a ruby polishing factory, Vietnamese desperados slugging it out in lawless ruby rush boom towns, and a 79-year-old Swiss gemologist with a shrewd business sense who will travel anywhere, no matter how dangerous or remote, in his search for exceptional gems. Most of the rubies are destined for excruciatingly dull fates-from adorning the cloistered wives of Arabian sheiks to residing in the cheap, mass-market jewelry coveted by middle Americans who tune in to home shopping networks. In the end, a stone is just a stone. It is the stories of the men who unearth these stones and bring them to the market, and the backdrop of strange lands that shape them, that ultimately outshine even the finest rubies with their power to fascinate. Many things have changed since researching this book. Thailand's formerly booming jewelry industry is today reeling from years of overheated growth-along with the rest of the Thai economy. The country's banking system is suffocat-ing under the weight of billions of dollars in bad loans some of which went towards massive gem and jewelry office towers in Bangkok. Vietnam's ruby mining and processing industry never fulfilled its early prom-ise, although the country continues to attract foreign investment in a host of other areas. Opium warlord Khun Sa-once the avowed rebel leader of the Shan people in their fight for independence from the Burmese government-has now retired to a villa in Rangoon, as a guest of the very regime he purported to be fighting against. Burma has opened up considerably to the outside world, and now wel-comes tourists to stay at the many international hotels newly opened in Rangoon. Pol Pot, the notorious leader of the Khmer Rouge guerillas who controlled the ruby mines of Pailin, Cambodia has died. The Pailin region is now part of the main country, though with a degree of autonomy quite helpful to continuing the gem rade with Thailand.
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