Wushan Spessartine Mine, Tongbei, Yunxiao Co., Zhangzhou, Fujian, Chinai

Regional Level Types
Wushan Spessartine Mine	Mine
Tongbei	Village
Yunxiao Co.	County
Zhangzhou	Prefecture-level City
Fujian	Province
China	Country

The first specimens of Chinese garnet associated with smoky quartz and feldspar appeared on the market in 1998. The locality cited was the city of Lechang, in Guangdong Province; only at the end of 2001, some dealers gave the province of Fujian as the true locality and Yunxiao as the nearest large city.

Samples come from two or three main collecting sites: the first lies near the village of Tongbei, southwest of Yunxiao; the second is at Yunling in Zhangpu County, about 30 km further northeast. At Tongbei, helvine and topaz occur, but no fluorite, which is present only at Yunling.
Guanghua Liu actually mentions three localities in his book “Fine minerals of China” on page 336: 1) Tonbei, Yunxiao Co.; 2) Shuijingping, Yunxiao Co.; and 3) Yunling, Shiliu, Zhangpu Co.

The discovery of these localities took place 15 years ago. Granitic rocks originated as intrusions during the late Mesozoic, as a result of the subduction of Paleo-Pacific Plate under the continental plate of southeastern China.

NOTE: The feldspar associated with the spessartine is microcline, not orthoclase as originally reported.

NOTE: According to B. Ottens there is no such thing as a "Spessartine Mine" at Wushan - this is a fiction of an Chinese dealer; the spessartines came from numerous small workings and quarries ...
"The name “Wushan” is a misnomer according to B. Ottens who has written that it was a name invented by a Chinese dealer so as to give a more precise locality to his spessartine specimens" (https://www.mindat.org/mesg-651608.html).

NOTE: This information is given from the Nanjing University:
There is an 800 km long Cretaceous granitic belt exposed in the southeastern coastal of China, it occurs from Guangdong through Fujian and extends to Zhejiang provinces. At this stage there are many locations that produces miarolitic cavities with different mineral specimens. There are over 20 different locations, and one third of them have spessartine. Most of the miarolitic cavity minerals were exposed by granite mining. Tongbei village represents the first place where people do systematic mining of the specimen, which is actually illegal unless you mine for granite building materials. A labelling as Tongbei-Wushan hill is OK, the Tongbei is the name of the village and the Wushan actually means Wu mountain. Wushan is now a protected national park so collecting minerals from the exposed granite is prohibited. As for the “Yunling village” - there is no such place and the description in Ottens’ book should be wrong, caused by incorrect information. However there are several locations between Yunxiao and Suian (location where Ottens describes as Yunling village) that produce miarolitic minerals and they belong to the Jingangshan granite pluton, a similar sized pluton to Wushan. It is complicated and there is no need to know because 99.9% of the spessartine-quartz specimens you can bought in the market came from Wushan pluton around Tongbei village.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References