Media

Mineral Festival 2013 - the first and largest mineral event of its kind
in Hong Kong Special Exhibition “Mineral Treasures of China”
to be displayed at the Stephen Hui Geological Museum

26 Apr 2013

 

The first in the territory Mineral Festival 2013 will be held from April 27 to April 30. The “Mineral Treasures of China” exhibition was officially opened together with the festival today (April 26) in the Stephen Hui Geological Museum of the University of Hong Kong (HKU).

The event is jointly organized by the Stephen Hui Geological Museum, the Mineralogy Society of Hong Kong, the Geological Society of Hong Kong and students of the Department of Earth Sciences and the Society of Earth Sciences of the University of Hong Kong. Other important Mineral Festival events are the Mineralogy Society’s 7^th Mineral Fair held in Loke Yew Hall on the campus of the University of Hong Kong, talks, workshops, guided museum exhibition tours and a special field trip to Tung Ping Chau led by Professor Chan Lung Sang of the Department of Earth Sciences, together composing the largest mineral event of its kind ever held in Hong Kong.

Mineral Treasures are a special part of our natural earth resources
Minerals are fundamental natural building blocks of earth materials and such the ingredients to almost all of the products we use in our daily lives.  Individual minerals are characterized by their unique combinations of chemical elements and the arrangement of their atoms. Earth is a vast chemical laboratory with a large range of environments with variable temperatures and pressures that act on the atoms of various elements to create more than 4000 minerals we know today. Throughout the 4.5 billion years of Earth history complex geological processes formed an accumulation of specific elements in only a few special locations in our Earth crust creating important non-renewable resources such as metal ores, oil and coal which we mine excessively to sustain our modern lifestyle we enjoy today. Under even more rare and special conditions the same processes have generated the most beautiful and diverse of mineral treasures.

Mineral Specimen appreciation and collecting in China only developed recently
Although mining activities in China already took place since 3000 years ago and Chinese mining industry is one of the most dynamic sectors in the world today, mineral collecting and appreciation never became a tradition in China as it did in Europe and the United States. As a result, with few exceptions, all exquisite crystals and mineral specimens found in the course of mining were consigned to the refining mills or the waste dumps. It was with China’s opening in the early 1980s, and the arrival of Western visitors, including geologists, mineralogists and mineral collectors, that Chinese gradually changed their attitudes towards mineral-specimen collecting.  Beautiful red Cinnabar and Realgar crystals and large, shinning Stibnite clusters from mines in Hunan Province were the first groups of Chinese minerals to find their ways into the markets of the Western countries. During the blooming of the mining industry in China between 1990s and early 2000s thousands of small, hand-operated mines opened and resulted in a flood of specimens onto the international market, where world’s best crystals were introduced from China such as gemmy Scheelite and Cassiterite from Sichuan, colourful Flourite and Calcite varieties from Hunan as well as shinning Mimetite from Guangdong and Pyromorphite from Guanxi appeared. While such specimens already have amazed collectors worldwide for centuries, they have stimulated an increasing interest within China itself only in recent years.

First special exhibition held at the Stephen Hui Geological Museum -- “Mineral Treasures of China”
The museum presents its first special temporary exhibition titled “Mineral Treasures of China” in collaboration with Dr. Guanghua Liu. This exhibition will appeal to a wide spectrum of Hong Kong public, to those who are interested in the scientific value of the naturally formed minerals and crystals, to those who appreciate the economic value of mineral deposits as well as to the artistically inclined visitors who look for the aesthetics of naturally formed minerals expressed by the beauty of their crystal form, color and mineral association. The exquisite specimens on display shall remind us, and in particular our younger generation, to appreciate the natural world of minerals and not just to take our mineral world for granted but to respect their limited and special value in our daily lives.

This exhibition presents over 50 of the finest mineral specimens found in China during the last 30 years and are classic representatives from typical mines/mining areas from 12 different provinces in China, including some of those mentioned above. Visitors can get a glimpse into the world of vivid and rare world-class China mineral specimens with many of them displayed to the public for the first time. For exhibition highlights, please click : http://www.cpao.hku.hk/media/mineral-e.doc

Dr. Guanghua Liu’s private collection is on display
The exquisite samples of the “Mineral Treasure of China” exhibition are kindly provided by Dr. Guanghua Liu, an internationally renowned enthusiast in collecting and preserving Chinese minerals. Dr. Guanghua Liu was born in Hunan Province, China, where he graduated from the Jiaozuo Mining College, and later gained a Master's degree in Coal Geology and Sedimentology from the China University of Geosciences. He now lives in Germany, and is the proprietor of AAA Minerals International (AG) in Tübingen, Germany and Zug, Switzerland. He has served on the scientific staff of Tübingen University in Germany, and he is a guest professor at the Chinese University of Mining and Technology, and the Chinese University of Geosciences in Beijing.  He is the author of the book of “Fine Minerals of China" (2006). In 2011 he completed the establishment of the “Guanghua International Mineral and Fossil Museum” at the Wuxi Science Museum and View Stone Park where his extensive personal collection of minerals is on permanent display. He is currently working on the development of exhibition galleries devoted to minerals and fossils with the Shaanxi Nature Museum in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province.

Details of the Mineral Festival activities can be found at http://www.minsochk.org/ENG/fair.php,    http://www.earthsciences.hku.hk/shmuseum, https://www.facebook.com/Stephen.Hui.Geological.Museum and www.geolsoc.org.hk

About Stephen Hui Geological Museum
The Stephen Hui Geological Museum was opened to the public on January 16, 2009 as the first and only geological museum in Hong Kong and since has established itself as a recognized resource for Earth Science education for primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong.

For press enquiry, please contact:
Rhea Leung, Manager (Media) Communications and Public Affairs Office,
at 2857 8555 / 9022 7446 or rhea.leung@hku.hk

For enquiry about the exhibition, programmes and activities, please contact :
Sandie Ho, Stephen Hui Geological Museum, at 2241 5472 or sandieho@hku.hk

Madame Anna Hui, Mr Richard Hui (left) and HKU Vice-Chancellor Professor Lap-Chee Tsui officiate the opening ceremony of the Mineral Festival 2013

Group photo of guests in the Mineral Festival opening ceremony.