Myanmar and the Stone of Heaven

Hpakant, a township in Kachin State, in northeastern Myanmar, is a living tapestry of Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights – a hell on earth of unbridled heroin addiction, violence and rampant HIV.

But what this hell holds is, for the Chinese, the most precious and sought raw-earth mineral of them all – the Stone of Heaven, Jade. “There is noth…