Chinese freshwater cultured pearl is a major type of pearl. Most of these pearls are grown in the greater Eastern China lake district with an annual yield of more than 800 metric tons, among which only 1 ‰ ~ 3 ‰ ranks in top quality. Like Japanese saltwater cultured pearls, Chinese fancy pearls such as disc-shaped, square-shaped, heart-shaped and rectangular are nuclei. But most Chinese pearls are nonnuclei. These very popular pearls vary in size and shape. Chinese producers have used bead-nucleation since 1995 to culture fancy pearls. Nucleation techniques are growing so sophisticated that they have adapted to implant some 32 small pieces of oyster viande into a healthy oyster to produce nonnuclei pearls. As a matter of fact, those pieces become calcified and crystallized inside the pearls. This technique yields high production, but fewer pearls with perfect roundness and shininess.
A company in China inserting a second bead into a sac has already yielded a pearl. The second pearl grows faster because the sac was already formed. With impressively thick nacre, bead size has grown up to 19.5mm, worth $50,000 which has been exhibited in Zhuji Museum. But it rarely happens. By means of advanced processing techniques, Japanese jewelers buy a large quantity of raw pearls from China and sell at a price times the original. Chinese farmers follow up tightly, they strive to increase the quality and lower the price so as to compete with Japanese freshwater pearls such as Biwa and saltwater pearls such as Akoya. However, the quality depends on culturing techniques and many environmental aspects such as temperature, wind, minerals, oxygen content, purity, stability and depth of water. Some big fishes even eat mollusks with small growing beads inside, framers have to catch those annoying fishes without disturbing the water. As pollution has become a serious problem in China, they have a long way to go.
Limited by local farming land, those skilled pearl farmers go further to inland China to cultivate mollusks there. Periodically they take volumes of bags of pearl beads back to their factories in Zhuji for sorting, bleaching, laser-dying, drilling, mounting, stringing or making handicrafts, health and cosmetic products and then sell their stuff on their stalls in Zhuji Pearl Market near Shanghai, with yearly sales up to $ 400 million. It has also dragged the business of fashion accessories. No matter what quality the pearls are, Chinese pearl is acceptable and flooding accross the globe.

Zhuji Pearl Market, Zhejiang

Pearl Farmland