The Rock Market in Souzhou

I was looking for yet another garden, the Blue Waves or something; I never did find it, but in my travels, I turned a corner and saw a rock market. The whole of a park, a square block, was filled with hundreds of rock dealers with their wares spread out on tarps. They were all Muslim men who spoke some language other than Mandarin; the buyers were Mandarin-speaking men. The rocks ranged in size from small boulders to tiny pebbles (actually, the few women who were shopping were poring through these tumbled pebbles-- raisin sized.) The larger rocks had various surfaces, different colors and textures, but they were just rinds. They had small circles drilled and polished into the surfaces at various points showing that they, too, were jade. They were expensive! I asked about a nice, pale green one the size of an orange section, and it was way out of my range. Sometimes the most interesting finds happen when you are lost.