Hong Kong Jade And Pearls - Certificates, Colour, And Shops You Can Trust in 2027
How Tourists Coming to Hong Kong Can Buy Genuinely Without Being Ripped Off
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Hong Kong Jade And Pearls - Certificates, Colour, And Shops You can Trust in 2027
Foreword by Jamie
How Tourists Can Buy Jade and Pearls Without Getting Taken For A Ride
I am not a jeweller but after leaving school back in the late 1970’s and after working in a trading office I did a 6 month stint at a company called Continental Jewellery who had an outlet in the Holiday Inn Golden Mile on Nathan Road and they thought a young white chap to handle foreign clients might work, it was a job and the most boring job on the planet, I had to sit in a seat and look the part for 10 hours a day 6 days a week, boring because we would get at most 5 or 10 clients coming in a day, it was however a great experience for me and it ignited my passion for diamonds which I still have, I just hated the boring routine and yes, the shop is still there and I was alwats grateful to the boss Mr. Chan for the opportunity
I have lived in Hong Kong since 2nd January 1972 and I have been doing private tours in this city since 2010. In that time I have been asked about jade and pearls more often than I have been asked about the weather, which is saying something in a place that can do both sunshine and a typhoon signal in the same afternoon. People arrive with a picture in their head. Green stone. White beads. A bargain under a flyover. The picture is half right and the other half is how visitors lose money.
This page replaces an older post that leaned on image blocks. Those blocks looked tidy on screen but they were a pain to copy. This rewrite puts every shop into plain text, one name, one detailed paragraph, so you can lift the lot into a notebook or a WhatsApp message to yourself. It is written for 2027. A few floors have moved. The Jade Market has not become more honest. The big jewellery chains have not become smaller. The rule that mattered in 2010 still matters now. If you want a souvenir, set a hard ceiling and enjoy the haggle. If you want jade or pearls you would still be happy to own in 10 years, walk into a proper shop and pay for the certificate as well as the colour.
I do not ever take a commission from any of the named shops below and I never will. I generally dislike sending guests into retail premises. When they ask, I would rather give them a page of names, addresses and the sort of warnings you only learn by living here, than wave them toward the first smiling stall holder in the Jade Market under the Kansu Street flyover.
Why This List Exists And Why The Old One Had To Go
The earlier version of this post mixed logos, photographs and short captions. Fine on a phone if you only wanted to look. Useless if you wanted to copy an address into a taxi or a hotel concierge note. Guests kept asking me to talk them through the same shops on the pavement. That is my cue. The list needed to work as writing.
Hong Kong is still one of the best cities on earth to buy jade and cultured pearls. It is no longer the cheapest place on earth to do it, and it was never the safest place to do it from a folding table. Bangkok, Zhuji and any number of airport duty free halls will sell you a strand of pearls. What Hong Kong still has, when you pick the right shop, is English across the counter, a laboratory culture that actually tests Jade, and a jewellery trade large enough that the serious companies cannot afford a public row about treated stone. That combination is worth paying for. It is also easy to miss if you let a market stallholder talk you into a special colour from Burma at 4 times the price of the stall next door.
Two Different Trades Sharing The Same City
It helps to know what you are walking into, because jade and pearls are not one trade. They sit a short walk apart in Tsim Sha Tsui and they behave differently.
Jade in Hong Kong mostly means jadeite, the harder, glassier stone that Chinese buyers have prized for generations. The trade name you will hear is Fei Cui. Nephrite exists as well, softer, often more opaque, perfectly respectable, and a different mineral. The two are not interchangeable and a stall that treats them as the same thing is already telling you something. Most of the serious money in this city is jadeite. Most of the tourist money in the Jade Market is neither.
Pearls are a cleaner business if you stay in a shop. Almost everything sold to visitors going into 2027 will be cultured. Kokichi Mikimoto worked out how to farm a pearl in 1893. The argument since then has been about origin, size, surface, lustre and whether you are paying for a brand name or for the bead itself. Akoya, white South Sea, golden South Sea, Tahitian and Chinese freshwater are different animals. A stall under a flyover that offers you all 5 in the same tray is not a farm. It is a tray.
I have bought jade in shops a few times over the years. I have never bought pearls for for the wife because my wife prefers diamonds and I know a bit about them. I have taken many guests to Rio Pearls, both those who told me in advance and those who asked on the day, and It has alwasy been a very positive experience. The same sentence does not apply to the Jade Market.
What Jade Actually Is, In Plain English
You do not need a degree. You do need 4 letters.
Type A is natural jadeite that has not been through acid and resin. A light coat of colourless wax to polish the surface is accepted in the trade and does not knock it out of Type A. This is the only grade I am willing to send a guest toward if real money is leaving the wallet.
Type B has been bleached and filled with resin so the stone looks cleaner than nature left it. It can look lovely in the shop. It does not always look lovely 5 years later.
Type C has been dyed. The green that sold you the piece may not be the green you fly home with.
Type B+C is both. Treat it as costume jewellery with a better accent.
There is no single market price for a bangle the way there is a published gold price. Colour, translucency, texture, evenness, size and whether the stone will actually fit over a human hand all move the number. That is why the same window can show one bangle at HK$15,000 (about US$1,920) and the one beside it at HK$150,000 (about US$19,230) and both prices can be honest. It is also why a stall can invent any number it likes.
If the piece matters, the paper that matters in this city is a report from the Hong Kong Jade and Stone Laboratory, often shortened to HKJSL, set up in 1993 after treated jadeite flooded the market in the early 1980s. NGTC and a handful of other serious labs exist. A printed card from the stall itself is not the same thing. A certificate is a description of the stone they tested. It is not a valuation, and it is not a promise that you got a bargain.
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The Jade Market in Kowloon | Great For Souvenir Hunters | Hong Kong
The Jade Market, Told Straight
Open 7 days a week but work on the theory that it opens at 10am and closes at 4pm, it is not set in stone (no pun intended!), some stalls open at 9am some will close after 5pm and some stalls will simply not open on Sunday, I always tell my guests to work on 10:30am to about 3:30pm daily.which is a little different to my general advice but close enough
The Jade Market sits under the flyover at Kansu Street and Battery Street in Yau Ma Tei, a short walk from Yau Ma Tei MTR (Subway). It has been there in one form or another since the 1970s and 1980s. You will hear stall counts from 250 to 450 depending on who is talking and which year they last counted. Two covered zones. Most stalls open from about 10 in the morning and start packing from 4 or 5 in the afternoon. It is busy. It is theatrical. Vendors will talk down the stall next door without blushing. That is the sport.
Go. I mean that. It is part of Kowloon and it is worth an hour of your life. Buy a small pendant, a pair of inexpensive earrings, a lucky charm for a grandchild. Treat it as a street market. On a stall you should not be paying more than about HK$1,560 (US$200) for anything. At that ceiling you can leave with several pieces and a story. Above that ceiling you have stopped buying a souvenir and started buying a problem.
I will say this twice because it is the whole point of the page. Pretty much everything on those stalls is treated, dyed, assembled or simply not the stone the price tag implies. Most visitors cannot tell. Most locals cannot tell without a lab. There is nothing immoral about buying a pretty green bracelet for HK$300 (about US$38) if you know that is what you are doing. There is something expensive about convincing yourself you have just found imperial jadeite for the price of a nice lunch.
A few practical notes from decades of walking through the place and a phrase I often use when asked if the jade is real top quality and I respond always “you are buying in a street market!” nuff said. A more polite version of this quote is this - Type A jadeite is unlikely on a market stall. Possible on a small cheap piece. Do not pay shop money here and hope. If you want Type A, walk into a shop and pay for the certificate
Real jadeite feels cold in the hand for longer than glass or plastic. That test is not enough on its own.
A gentle tap can produce a clearer note than plastic. Doing this too theatrically on a stall is a good way to be invited to leave, with language to match.
Opening prices are often 2, 3 or 4 times the number the vendor will take. Start lower than feels polite. Stay polite. Walk away. Walking away is the only tool that works.
The first customer of the day story is a sales line. Sometimes it is also a genuine discount. You will not know which.
Quality Tourism Services shops in the proper retail trade show a red junk boat emblem. Market stalls do not become trustworthy because they have a laminated card.
Sandra’s stall and a handful of others have been named in visitor notes for years. Stall numbers move. I will not send you to a number I cannot swear is still the same number in 2027. If you want a name on a door and peace of mind, use the list below.
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No, You Are Not Hallucinating | US$1.93 Million Jade Bangle | Hong Kong
The HK$15,050,000 ( US$1,930,000) Bangle
The image is telling in one important way, it shows just how important the green colour is for jade, you will notice the difference in price for the 2 bangles in the image and you will see the sharp contrast in colour and the price.
You can almost imagine the conversation in the shop - “Mr. Chan, we have this new lovely jade bangle with a great colour, we reckon US$2 million as a start price, what do you think? Ok says Mr. Chan, we can always knock off a few zero’s and still make a 1,000% profit”
Yes, the jade bangle in the window was priced at HK$15,050,000, which is about US$1,930,000. No, you would not buy a piece like that off a folding table. I photographed it in a Luk Fook branch on Nathan Road, walked in, and asked the young man on the floor why it cost that. He did not blink. He fetched it from the window. I was not offered a glass of water. He said the colour was very special and it was from Burma. I know just enough about jade to be a nuisance, so I pointed at the bangle next to it, which was about 10% of the price, and asked what the difference was. He called a senior. She smiled and said special colour. I made my excuses and left. They would have given me a certificate. They would not have given me an explanation I could repeat to a grown adult.
I still cannot fathom walking into a chain store and handing over close to US$2 million on the strength of two words. If I were going to spend that sort of money on a stone it would be a diamond, a ruby or an emerald, and I would be in Ronald Abram, Graff or Harry Winston, and only at a pinch in Chow Tai Fook. That is a taste, not a moral law. It is also why this page exists. Colour is not a price list.
What A Tourist Can Realistically Spend In 2027
Use these as a compass, not a contract. Gold prices, tourist numbers and the mood in Mainland China all shove jewellery prices around.
Jade Market souvenirs and gifts
Small pendants, charms, simple earrings: HK$80 to HK$400 (about US$10 to US$51)
Modest bangles and larger trinkets: HK$300 to HK$1,560 (about US$38 to US$200)
Anything above HK$1,560 (US$200) on a stall: walk away and go to a shop
Reputable shop, everyday jade
Small Type A pendants and simple settings: often from about HK$3,000 to HK$20,000 (about US$385 to US$2,565)
Wearable bangles of honest colour: commonly HK$15,000 to HK$80,000 (about US$1,920 to US$10,255) and then the lift is vertical
Serious jade
Fine Jade from the listed companies: HK$100,000 (about US$12,820) is not a shocking price
Museum colour: the window I mentioned, and then some
Pearls
Freshwater fashion strands in a department store: often HK$800 to HK$5,000 (about US$100 to US$640)
Akoya or mixed cultured jewellery in a Hong Kong shop: HK$4,000 to HK$25,000 (about US$515 to US$3,205)
South Sea and Tahitian in a specialist: HK$15,000 to HK$80,000 (about US$1,920 to US$10,255) for pieces a visitor actually wears
Mikimoto and Tasaki: start higher, and the name is part of what you are buying
The 5 Jade Shops I Personally Recommend in Hong Kong
Chinese Arts And Crafts
Founded in 1959, Chinese Arts and Crafts is the old official taste of this city, the shop that used to be where visiting dignitaries were taken when somebody wanted them to leave with a piece of China that would survive the flight. Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher both went through the door in their day, which tells you the client book if not the lighting. The company has tightened and moved with the times. The current flagship sits at Shop 2 and Shop 7, Ground Floor, Causeway Centre, 28 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, a new 10,000 square foot room that opened in mid January 2026 and is built around jadeite, carved work and Chinese dress rather than the old department store jumble. Hours are roughly 10:30am to 7:30pm. There is still a jewellery counter at Shop 320, Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Admiralty, 10:30am to 7:00pm, and there has long been a Tsim Sha Tsui presence at Shop 1, Ground Floor, China Hong Kong City, 33 Canton Road. Telephone for the Wan Chai flagship is +852 2827 6667, with +852 5172 5073 also listed for the company. Pacific Place is +852 2523 3933. China Hong Kong City is +852 2735 4061. This is where I send a guest who wants Type A Jade with a straight face and a laboratory trail, and who does not want to be shouted at. You will pay shop prices. You should. Ask for the certificate. Ask what lab issued it. Then decide if the colour is a colour you can live with, because that is the only test that still works once you leave the building. Website: www.cachk.com. Email: cac@cachk.com. An older company address also in use is cac@crvanguard.com.hk.
Chow Tai Fook
Chow Tai Fook is the name on the door that even a first time visitor has already seen 6 times before lunch. The company goes back to 1929. In Hong Kong and Macau together you are looking at dozens of branches, clustered on Queen’s Road Central, Nathan Road, Harbour City, Causeway Bay and just about every mall that takes jewellery seriously. Fei Cui (Jade) has been a real growth line for them, not a side counter. They will sell you a modest jade pendant and they will sell you a piece that needs a safe. They publish, they certify, they train staff who can at least point to a report. I would still rather buy a diamond from them than a US$1.9 million bangle on the strength of special colour, but for a visitor who wants a Hong Kong name, an English speaker and a receipt that means something at home, this is the large, safe door. Walk into the Harbour City Ocean Terminal branch or one of the Queen’s Road Central flagships rather than the smallest mall kiosk if you want a proper jade counter and not a rush. You will not get a market bargain. You will get a company that is still here in 10 years if the clasp needs a look. Website: www.chowtaifook.com. Email: enquiry@chowtaifook.com. Customer service telephone +852 2526 8649.
Luk Fook Jewellery
Luk Fook is the other listed Hong Kong company, born in 1991 and now sitting in the same malls as Chow Tai Fook so often that visitors mix the two names up, which neither company enjoys. They are a serious jeweller. They do gold, diamonds and jadeite with certificates. They also gave me the most useful jade lesson I have had in years, which is that a chain can be reputable and still leave you none the wiser about why one green circle costs 10 times the green circle beside it. Use them for mid to high jade when you want a ticket, a report and a shop you can find again. Do not use them, or anyone else, as a substitute for knowing your own ceiling. The window I photographed is the extreme end. Most visitors are shopping 3 or 4 zeros lower, and at that level Luk Fook is a perfectly grown up counter. Branches are everywhere a tourist walks. Harbour City and the Nathan Road stretch in Tsim Sha Tsui are the easy ones if you are already in Kowloon. Website: www.lukfook.com. Email: info@lukfook.com. Customer service telephone +852 2710 9368.
Yue Hwa Chinese Products Emporium
One of my favourite stores in Hong Kong
301 to 309 Nathan Road, Jordan, in the Champion Building, right on top of Jordan MTR (Subway). The flagship opened in 1976 and it is still the only full scale Yue Hwa department store left in Hong Kong, something like 80,000 square feet over multiple floors. This is not a high jewellery salon. It is the old Chinese products emporium, the place you go for tea, porcelain, silk, a chop carved while you wait, and a jade counter that will sell you a gift without making a meal of it. Staff are generally friendly, many of them speak good English, and they are not the hard sell you get under the flyover 10 minutes up the road. Opening hours run long, typically 10 in the morning until 10 at night. I have sent people here for years when they wanted something jade-coloured that would survive being wrapped in a suitcase and given to a sister-in-law. Keep the budget honest. This is a department store with a jewellery section, not a dealer with a mine. For that reason it sits on this list. Tourists overpay in markets because they are excited. They rarely overpay in Yue Hwa by the same margin, because the prices are on the goods and the atmosphere is closer to a well run family shop than a hunt. Website: www.yuehwa.com. Email: info3@yuehwa.com. Flagship telephone +852 3511 2222.
Shun Tak Tong
Mezzanine, Shop MW2, The Peninsula Hong Kong, Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui. Hours have long been 11 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon, 7 days, though some older notes also give 11am to 8pm. Telephone +852 9401 5916, with +852 2368 3066 also listed in visitor notes over the years. There is no public website and no published email. That is not a failing. It is a small specialist, not a chain, and that is the point. The owner has been in the Peninsula shopping floors for as long as I can remember, deals in jade and semi precious pendants and collectables, does not appear to care about Tripadvisor, and does not take offence if you spend 40 minutes looking and buy nothing. Prices have always struck me as more reasonable than the marble around them would suggest. I have sent guests here when they wanted a grown up conversation about a piece rather than a performance. One caution for 2027. The Peninsula opened on 11th December 1928 and turns 100 on 11th December 2028. In August 2026 the owning company approved a renovation of this hotel and The Peninsula Tokyo with a combined budget of HK$2.1 billion, about US$268 million. They have not published a start date. They have said they will try to keep disruption down and keep the character of the old building. Call before you make a special trip across the lobby. If the door is still there, it remains one of the few jade counters in this city I would walk into without my guard up.
A Word On The Big Jade Buildings In Jordan and sorry I cannot be more specific on the specifics, it was mentioned to me by a friend who is a jeweller.
Between the Jade Market and Canton Road there is a third landscape that visitor lists often skip. Multi storey jade centres on and around Canton Road and the Jordan stretch, rooms full of dealers who sell to other dealers as much as they sell to you. Some of those rooms are perfectly straight. Some are not. I am not putting a floor number on this page because floors change and I will not send a first timer into a warren with a smile and a prayer. If you already know jade, go and learn. If you do not, the 5 names above will do more for you than an afternoon of comparing trays under strip lights.
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Rio Pearls Quiet Elegance and Utterly Reliable | Best Place for Pearls | Hong Kong
The 5 Pearl Shops I Personally Recommend in Hong Kong
Rio Pearls
3rd Floor, Front Block, Ocean View Court, 39 Mody Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, with the head office showroom at Unit 1701, 17th Floor, Railway Plaza, 39 Chatham Road South. The Mody Road showroom runs Monday to Saturday, about 9:30am to 6:30pm. Telephone +852 2723 7676. This is where I tell my gursts to go. This is a Hong Kong pearl company founded in 1983, a wholesaler and manufacturer as much as a retailer, with its own farms and a long record in white and golden South Sea, Tahitian, Akoya, freshwater and mabe. They are a Quality Tourism Services name. They are also the shop I have actually walked guests into. You go up in a lift. You sit. You look at trays. Nobody needs to pretend this is a surprise boutique you stumbled into. It is a showroom that is used to visitors who have a morning and a budget. I have never had a guest come back unhappy or without a piece. That is a rarer sentence than it should be in this trade. Call or write first if you can. A showroom that also works wholesale will treat you better if they know you are coming but they have no problem with walk ins. Do not confuse their prices with a market stall and do not confuse them with Mikimoto. Different job. Website: www.riopearl.com.hk. Showroom email: showroom@riopearl.com.hk. Head office email: info@riopearl.com.hk.
Mikimoto
The company that made cultured pearls a business, 1893 to now. In Hong Kong the easy locations are Shop 2035, ifc mall, Central, telephone +852 2234 7189, hours about 11am to 8pm Monday to Thursday and 11am to 8:30pm Friday to Sunday; Shop OT208A, 2nd Floor, Ocean Terminal, Harbour City, Tsim Sha Tsui, telephone +852 2114 0318; Shop G05, Ground Floor, Lee Garden Two, 28 Yun Ping Road, Causeway Bay, telephone +852 2506 1183; and Shop 2041, Elements, Tsim Sha Tsui, telephone +852 2196 8570. There is also a counter inside Harvey Nichols at Pacific Place. You are paying for grading, matching and a name that still means something in Tokyo, Paris and New York. A strand here can cost several times what a similar looking strand costs in a local shop. Is it several times better to the naked eye? Often not. Is it the piece a certain kind of buyer wants to own? Yes. Use Mikimoto when the gift has to arrive in a Mikimoto box. Use somebody else when you want millimetres and lustre for the money. Book if you want an unhurried look. These shops are boutiques, not trays on a felt cloth. Website: www.mikimoto.com.hk. Email: info@mikimoto.com.hk.
Tasaki
A Japanese company from 1954, more modern in the hand than Mikimoto, known for the Balance line and for not treating pearls as grandmother’s beads. Hong Kong doors include Harbour City, Elements, Times Square in Causeway Bay and Shop 327, 3rd Floor, Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Admiralty, telephone +852 2657 2622. If a guest wants pearls that do not look like a wedding in 1985, this is the name I mention after Mikimoto. The prices are not market prices. The design is the reason to walk in. Pair it with a morning in Pacific Place or Harbour City and you have done the luxury end of the pearl job without wandering into a side street. Website: www.tasaki.com.hk. Email: tasaki@tasaki.com.hk. Pacific Place telephone +852 2657 2622.
TSL Jewellery
Tse Sui Luen, a Hong Kong company rather than a Japanese one, strong in diamonds and perfectly competent in cultured pearls. You will find them in the same malls as Chow Tai Fook and Luk Fook. This is the practical pearl counter for a visitor who wants a necklace or a pair of earrings that look right with a dark jacket and do not require a second mortgage or a Japanese brand story. I put them on the list because not every guest needs Mikimoto and not every guest wants a wholesale showroom. TSL sits in the middle with a local name, English at the counter and a repair bench that will still be in Hong Kong if a clasp fails. Ask to see the pearls in daylight if the shop will let you step toward a door. Fluorescent light is a terrible judge of lustre. Website: www.tslj.com. Email: enquiry@tslj.com. Customer service telephone +852 2628 6228.
Chow Sang Sang
Another of the old Hong Kong listed jewellers, family roots, gold in the blood, pearls and jade in the cases. Branches all over town, with the Nathan Road and mall flagships the easiest for a visitor. I include them because they are the sort of shop a local family actually uses for a birthday necklace, which is a different test from a tourist list. Prices are displayed. Workmanship on gold is quoted in the Hong Kong way, separate from the metal. For pearls, treat them as a reliable mid to upper mid counter. You are not buying a farm. You are buying a company that has to answer to Hong Kong customers the week after you fly home, and that discipline shows. Website: www.chowsangsang.com. Email: cseshop@chowsangsang.com. Customer service telephone +852 2192 3123.
How To Look At A Pearl Without Pretending You Are A Dealer
Lustre is the first thing. The light should come back at you, not sit on the surface like emulsion paint. Surface should be clean enough that you are not buying a map of pits. Shape is a taste. Round costs more. Drop and baroque can look better on a real neck. Matching on a strand is where cheap strings fall apart. Hold the strand up. If every third bead is a different evening, keep walking. Size is not quality. A 13mm South Sea bead with a dull skin is a large dull bead.
The old tooth test is something you will still read about. Draw a pearl across a front tooth and real nacre is meant to feel faintly sandy, glass and plastic smooth. Do not try it in Hong Kong. This is a city where people still wear masks, where hand gel is a pavement sport, and where plenty of us will not press a lift button with a finger. A shop assistant would die of fright if you put their stock in your mouth. The test is only a clue anyway. Coatings can fake the grit. Buy the seller. Look at the light. Look at the skin. Look at the certificate.
Shop Light Lies, Daylight Tells You More
This applies to jade and pearls equally, and it is the single most useful thing I can tell a guest when thinking about making a purchase.
A jewellery window is a small theatre. Dark velvet. Tight spots. Cool light on diamonds so the white flashes harder against the black. Warm light on gold and jade so the metal looks richer and the green looks deeper. Warm spots on pearls so a dull skin looks wetter than it is. Mirrors behind so one stone becomes three. None of that is illegal. It is the job. I first learned it at 16, working in a Hong Kong jewellery shop. The lamps have improved. The trick has not.
I still stop at Chow Tai Fook windows. Those stones sparkle on purpose. That does not make the piece a fraud. It makes the window a salesman. Last year in the Jade Market my wife said what I should have said years earlier. The lights in there are very bright. Most of what sits under them is not jewellery grade. The stall needs that brightness. A hard white lamp makes every green look more awake and every bead look more alive. Take the same tray into ordinary daylight and some of the performance drops out.
Do the looking in this order.
Look at the piece in the window or under the stall lamp. That is how they want you to fall in love. Look at it on the counter, in the hand, out of the spotlight. If the price is real money, ask to see it closer to daylight. Stay inside the shop. Let them carry it. A reputable shop will usually walk the piece toward the door with you. They will not send you onto Nathan Road alone with a tray. That is not rudeness. That is inventory that might do a runner!
Daylight is ruder than shop light, which is the point. Dye in jade shows more. Resin in Type B looks less like nature. A pearl with real lustre still throws light back. A poor pearl goes flat. Two white strands that looked like twins in the case can separate the moment they see ordinary light. Two green bangles that looked like cousins under a lamp can stop being cousins by the entrance.
You do not need a laboratory in your pocket for this test. You need to stop judging the piece only under the lamp that is working for the seller.
Dos And Don’ts When You Buy Jade And Pearls In Hong Kong
Do
Set a number before you leave the hotel and write it down. Excitement is not a budget.
Buy souvenirs in the Jade Market and buy anything expensive in a shop with a door, a company name and a laboratory habit.
Ask whether the jade is Type A. Then ask which lab said so. Then look at the report, not the laminated card.
Look at jade and pearls in daylight as well as under the shop lamps.
Haggle in the market. Start well below the first number. Smile. Leave. Come back if you want to.
Keep receipts, certificates and the shop’s full name. Insurance and customs both enjoy paperwork.
Try a bangle on. Jadeite bangles are often cut as a continuous circle. If it does not pass the hand, it is a sculpture, not a bracelet.
Use cash if that is how you prefer to settle. The big companies take cards. Some smaller rooms prefer cash and will say so.
Walk into 2 shops before you buy a serious piece.
Don’t
Do not pay tens of thousands of dollars under a flyover. Not for jade. Not for pearls. Not because the man has a sad story about his uncle in Burma.
Do not confuse cold-to-the-touch with a laboratory report.
Do not buy Type B or Type C at Type A money. If they will not discuss treatment, you already have the answer.
Do not let a vendor tap two pieces together and call that a certificate.
Do not buy pearls from a stall that also contains a watch, HDMI cables and a singing Buddha.
Do not accept special colour as a price. Colour is the start of the conversation, not the end of it.
Do not feel rude for walking out. Walking out is how the trade stays honest.
Do not ship a high value piece in checked luggage if you can wear it or carry it.
Do not expect a market stall to still be there in 6 months if you need a repair.
A Few Things I Would Tell A Guest Before Going Shopping
If you only have 2 hours, do the Jade Market first while you are still sceptical, then walk to Yue Hwa on Nathan Road and look at their jade with your eyes already calibrated. If the budget is real, skip the market as a buying floor and go straight to Chinese Arts and Crafts or Chow Tai Fook, then, if pearls are the job, sit down at Rio Pearls on Mody Road.
If you are the sort of person who wants one beautiful object and no drama, Shun Tak Tong in the Peninsula and Mikimoto in ifc or Harbour City will cover both trades in two civilised shops.
Feng shui talk will appear. Jade is protection, health, a stone that sits against the skin. Plenty of people in this city wear a bangle for reasons that have nothing to do with a certificate. I take that seriously after 50+ years here. I also take the difference between a stone that will still be a stone in 20 years and a stone that has been cooked in acid. You can honour the first idea without ignoring the second.
Humidity and pearls are not friends. Hong Kong will try to coat everything you own in a light film of summer. Wipe pearls with a soft cloth after you wear them. Do not park them next to perfume, and do not leave them in a hotel bathroom that has just run a 20 minute shower. Jade cares less. A knock against a granite table cares a lot. Jadeite is hard. It is not immortal.
I still think the most expensive jade in a chain store window is a strange way to spend a fortune. That is my taste. Your sister may see the same bangle and feel something I do not. Buy the jewellery. Keep the certificate. Leave the stall with a cheap present and a photograph. That is a decent day’s work in this city
Researching a retail price for diamond, jade or pearl jewellery, is it possible?
Diamonds, yes. Jade, no. Pearls sit in the middle and still will not give a tourist a price they can look up on a phone.
Diamonds are the nearest thing the jewellery trade has to a published price. Not a stock price like gold. A grid. Size, colour, clarity, cut. A 1 carat stone with a serious laboratory report can be compared with other 1 carat stones of the same letters. Dealers work off lists. You can get a rough research number before you walk in. The shop will still add a margin, and a poorly cut stone with pretty letters is not the same object as a well cut one, but you are not guessing in the dark. That is why a diamond conversation can sound like a conversation.
Jade is not that. There is no list that says this green, this size, this price. Colour, translucency, texture, evenness, whether a bangle will pass a human hand, and whether it is Type A, B or C all move the number, and they move it violently. Two Type A bangles can sit in the same window at HK$15,000 and HK$150,000 and both prices can be honest. The certificate tells you what was done to the stone. It does not tell you what it is worth. The HK$15,050,000 bangle was not priced from a spreadsheet. It was priced from a colour and a buyer who might exist. For a tourist, that looks like a number plucked out of the air. In the trade it is a hunch built on years of looking. Same result for the person standing there. You cannot research your way to a fair jade price the way you can with a diamond.
Pearls are closer to diamonds than jade is, and still not close enough to help a visitor. The trade grades by type, size, lustre, surface, shape, colour and matching. Akoya strands of a given millimetre have something like a wholesale band. Golden South Sea and Tahitian have colour premiums the way jade has colour premiums. None of that sits on a public page a guest can use. Two white 8mm strands can look identical and not be. Mikimoto is not a market price. It is a brand price sitting on top of a bead price. So you can learn the order of things. You cannot look up “what should this cost.”.
So there you go
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Go here for the Hong Kong Michelin Restaurant Guide which includes the Bib Gourmand Category
I do not do Food Tours in Hong Kong but I know people that do!
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The information above can be shown to restaurant managers in Hong Kong if you are intolerant to gluten and nuts,
I do not do food tours as mentioned above, I have very specific reasons and part of it is that I do not speak Cantonese or write Chinese, I am from Yorkshire in England and I lack the language gene and it is not through lack of trying and yes a lot of restaurants do not have English menu’s or staff who speak conversational English.
.. and yet I have eaten at close to 1,400 restaurants in Hong Kong since January 2nd 1972, my wife was born in Hong Kong and we have been together over 40 years and her first language is Cantonese and a lot of her family are Chinese or half Chinese so I have never had much of an issue!
This does not translate to doing food tours though, yes, I could do them, no problem there but they would never ever be as good as the food tours done by my friends (see the 3 links above) most of their awesome guides are locally born Hong Kong Chinese and obviously food culture is part of their DNA, it is impossible for me to compete with that!
So please feel free to contact them for food tours
I do not do Hiking Tours in Hong Kong but I know someone that does!
I do not do Hiking Tours, never have and never will even though I used to go Hiking a lot when I was a lot younger, The Hong Kong Government is promoting hiking tours so I urge you to contact my friend Sabrina at Hong Kong Trails and Tours, she is a long time Hong Kong resident and and a very experienced hiker with close to 700 Hikes in 15+ years under her belt, please click on the link below
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