Nephrite such as Lantian, Shaanxi, were also in great demand). There, white and greenish nephrite jade is found in small quarries and as pebbles and boulders in the rivers flowing from the Kuen-Lun mountain range northward into the Takla-Makan desert area. River jade collection was concentrated in the Yarkand, and the White Jade (Yurungkash) and Black Jade (Karakash) Rivers in Khotan. From the Kingdom of Khotan, on the southern leg of the Silk Road, yearly tribute payments consisting of the most precious white jade were made to the Chinese imperial court and there transformed into "objets d'art" by skilled artisans, as
The First Series of Standardized Forms of Words with Non-standardized Variant Forms The First Series of Standardized Forms of Words with Non-standardized Variant Forms The First Series of Standardized Forms of Words with Non-standardized Variant Forms () published on December 19, 2001 and officially implemented on March 31, 2002, is a list of 338 Standard Chinese words that have variant written forms (i.e. where the same word may be written with one or more different Chinese characters with the same pronunciation, referred to as "", translated into English in the official publication as "variant forms of the same word"). In the "First Series", one of the variant written forms for each word