Three jade pieces from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region took the Golden Prize at China’s Flower Industry Art contest for 2014, recently, drawing more attention to the region’s developments in jade carving, iyaxin.com has reported.

Li Zechang, the vice-head of a Xinjiang jade jewelry guild, explained that customers care a lot about the technology level of the masters producing the jade works which are much more expensive than ordinary items, so, showing yourself as a winner is a significant move for the region’s jade business.

Xinjiang has more than 10,000 enterprises involved in Hetian jade, a famous nephrite, at least 400 of them involved in carving jade, which provides jobs for nearly 5,000. (from china daily)