Many years ago, in Fangshan, Changle, the old man herding sheep found a sharp-edged, extremely hard, dark blue and bright stone in the ravine. He rubbed flint with it and lit cigarettes. They call it blue flint. Children also found eggs-sized gems while swimming in the river in summer. They threw the blue stone to the bottom of the water and then plunged in to touch it. Finally, if they can't touch it, they will forget it.

Due to ignorance of sapphire, foreigners "plundered" a large number of Changle sapphires with excellent texture by mining or low-cost acquisition in the 1980s.

The loss of sapphire from 65438 to 0985 attracted the attention of local government departments, and then formulated relevant management policies to strengthen the management of sapphire. Changle people are lucky, and sapphire is a treasure of heaven and Changle. From 65438 to 0993, Changle established the national large-scale jewelry wholesale market-China Gem City, which realized the development of Changle jewelry industry from fragmentation to aggregation.

From 65438 to 0996, Changle County established the first county-level gemstone association in China to plan, coordinate, supervise and manage the jewelry industry, provide market information, technical training, business guidance, quality appraisal and other services for the development of the jewelry industry, and play a positive role in promoting the healthy development of the jewelry industry.

In 2002, the China Gemstone Museum with an investment of150,000 yuan was completed in Gemstone City, China, with a construction area of 8,000 square meters. It is the first large-scale gem museum in China, which integrates China gem culture popularization, specimen exhibition and jewelry shopping.

In recent years, Changle has made full use of the advantages of resources, policies, talents, technology and market, strengthened industry management and intensified cultivation. The local jewelry industry has developed rapidly and has become a resounding brand in the local economic development.

At present, there are more than 40,000 employees in the jewelry industry in the county, and more than 200 enterprises 1.200 are engaged in jewelry processing and sales, with an annual processing capacity of1.3000 carats, 45 million ornaments and 5,000 Dovanca of precious metals. Five enterprises were awarded "China Famous Brand" and "Shandong Famous Brand" respectively.

In order to make the jewelry industry bigger and stronger, and develop towards honesty and branding, Changle started to hold Changle China International Gem Festival in 2002, thus attracting more jewelry customers to gather in Gem City. Up to now, the Gem Festival has been held for seven times, and each session has attracted hundreds of merchants from jewelry industry and tourism industry at home and abroad to participate. The exhibits involve more than 20 kinds, more than 500 kinds of colors and thousands of styles, and the transaction volume reaches hundreds of millions of dollars. In recent years, it is the characteristic of Changle to take gems as the leading factor to promote the coordinated development of the industrial system.

It is reported that in order to further enlarge and strengthen Changle's jewelry industry, Changle China Gem City is currently undergoing overall renovation and expansion. After the completion of the expansion project of Gem City, it will become a large-scale international jewelry with an area of 10 18 mu and a building area of1kloc-0/5000 square meters, integrating gem culture display, jewelry, craft gifts, souvenir processing transactions, jewelry processing equipment, accessories and packaging supplies transactions, high-end business apartments and leisure and entertainment. By then, the annual transaction scale of jewelry will reach 654.38+000 billion yuan.