China has a long history of mining mountain jade. Mining mountain jade is more difficult than mining seed jade. The jade is located at the peak of the Kunlun Snow Mountain, where transportation is dangerous and difficult, and the environment is cold with oxygen deficiency. As recorded in the "Taiping Yulan": "The hardest thing is to obtain jade. Crossing three rivers and five lakes to reach the Kunlun Mountains, a thousand people go, but only a hundred return; a hundred people go, but only ten return." Despite this, ancient people risked their lives to mine jade treasures in the Kunlun and Altai mountains.
Rare things are valuable. Although the formation reasons for jade materials are not much different from ordinary stones or iron ores, the mining method is completely different from other minerals. Miners must have considerable identification skills and rely on experience to carefully separate the jade from the rock debris as large and intact as possible. It can be seen that digging out jade material from its place of origin on high mountains and geological bodies is an extremely arduous task. Jade mining has always been a highly challenging operation since ancient times, and when combined with the transportation issues of the time, it became even more difficult. After the Qing Dynasty, due to improved transportation capabilities, there were more instances of going up the mountain to mine jade.