I go find red stone

Follow the dream of changing life

On the first day of October, I followed Lang Van Dim (28 years old) up Liet hill in Ke Khoang village (Chau Binh commune, Quy Chau district) to look for red stones. It was only 6am, it was raining heavily, standing a few meters away I still couldn’t see people’s faces clearly, but at the foot of Liet hill at this time there were already many people. The chatter and the calls to each other made the whole hill noisy. When reaching the foot of the hill, these groups of people began to separate, each in a different direction to start looking for their own luck.

The rain was getting heavier, but it still couldn’t stop the crowds from continuing to climb the hill. “The harder it rains, the more people come. Because the heavier the rain, the more the soil can be eroded, revealing the red rocks,” Dim explained. Some wore raincoats, others held umbrellas, and bent down close to the ground to see better. They used their hands to turn over blades of grass and leaves. They trudged along in the pouring rain.

A group of people braved the rain to search for red rocks on Liet hill. Photo: Tien Hung

It had been raining for many days, the soil and rocks on the hill were wet, and occasionally we heard the screams of people who had unfortunately slipped and fallen. The group of people searching for red stones included all ages. From children as young as 10, to elderly people over 80. Ms. Lang Thi Toan (77 years old) said that this was the 7th day she had gone up Liet hill with the hope of finding red stones. However, like the previous days, today Ms. Toan still had to return empty-handed. Rolling up her pants, pointing to the bruises on her wrinkled knees, Ms. Toan said that these were injuries from slipping and falling after days of walking in the rain to find red stones.

More than a week ago, Mrs. Toan heard her neighbors gossiping that many people picked up red stones on Liet hill and sold them for billions. The red stones were revealed after heavy rains. So she decided to go up the hill to seek her luck. Mrs. Toan also wanted to change her life thanks to red stones. Every day after waking up, Mrs. Toan quickly ate a bowl of rice, then put on a raincoat, and used a stick to climb Liet hill. At noon, she came home to cook rice, rested for about half an hour, then continued up the hill, diligently searching until dark. “It was very tiring. Getting wet in the rain, looking down all day also made my back tired. There were many days when I didn’t want to go anymore, but just sitting at home looking up the hill and seeing people walking together made me anxious. What if they picked them up? So I went again,” Mrs. Toan said with a laugh. Even though she stumbled many times and her children and grandchildren tried to stop her, Mrs. Toan said she still didn’t give up.

Lang Van Dim holds an umbrella, tirelessly pursuing his dream of changing his life. Behind Dim are people with the same goal. Photo: Tien Hung

“Ah…. Here it is”, a young man about 20 years old standing in the middle of the hill shouted loudly, while everyone was silently looking down for the red stone. It seemed that this young man had just picked up something. Immediately, the group of more than 10 people searching around gathered around. After examining and carefully cleaning the stone, the group looked disappointed and went back to continue their work. It turned out that this person had just picked up a stone with a shiny red shell on the outside, so they mistook it for a red stone. After carefully cleaning, it was revealed that this colored stone had no value.

“I had to bend down to observe carefully. The red stone was very different from the normal stone. Not only the color but it also radiated a shimmer…”, it took me a long time to chat and get to know Lang Van Dim before he shared some “tips” on finding red stones on the hill. Having said that, Dim also admitted that even though he had been looking for red stones for more than 10 days, he still hadn’t found any, nor had he witnessed anyone picking them up. Even since he was born, Dim had never seen any valuable red stones with his own eyes. He only knew from what adults told him and from pictures posted online.

A rather old woman trudges in search of red stones. Photo: Tien Hung

Beware of Gemstone Scams

Liet Hill is quite low, less than 2 hectares wide, but there are hundreds of people coming up to find red stones. All of them are locals. They have been flocking up the hill for about half a month now, since the heavy rains began. The name Liet Hill was also given by people looking for red stones, since the early 90s of the last century, along with places like Ty Hill, Trieu Hill...

“They dug up this hill in the past, the whole hill was turned upside down but no stones were found. Because they dug up the soil on the hill and brought it down to the stream to wash, they washed until they were exhausted, lying all over but still could not find any red stones, so they named the hill Liet hill”, said Mr. Kim Van Duyen - Secretary of the Chau Binh Commune Party Committee. Not far away is Trieu hill - a hill where many stones were found, selling for millions of dong, so people looking for red stones named it that. Trieu hill after being dug up has now become a livestock farm. Ty hill - a place where many red stones are said to sell for billions of dong, is still strictly protected by a business, even though it has not been exploited for nearly 10 years.

The people I met on the hill who were looking for red stones said that the acacia forest on Liet Hill had just been exploited last year. After cutting down the acacia, the forest owner dug up the roots and then dug up the soil to plant a new batch of acacia. Therefore, they thought that there was a high possibility that red stones would also be dug up from the ground, and with heavy rains, they would be exposed. However, the biggest motivation for people to rush to the hill was the rumor that many people had picked up red stones in the past few days.

“Someone sold it for billions,” said Lang Van Hoc (25), one of the red stone seekers I met on Liet Hill, while showing off a photo of the red stones saved on his phone. However, when we asked who exactly found these stones and when, Hoc said he didn’t know. Hoc also didn’t know when or where the photo was taken, only that one person sent it to another via social media with the information “won a billion-dollar red stone.”

The image of the red stones that Hoc showed the reporter. However, Hoc also did not know when these images were taken. Photo: Tien Hung captured

Walking next to Hoc, Mr. Nguyen Van Hai (67 years old), has also joined the group searching for red stones on Liet hill for a few days now. Mr. Hai said he decided to go to the hill to seek luck after hearing that many people had picked up precious stones. “Some people sold them for 100 million VND, others sold them for 80 million VND. Every day is good,” Mr. Hai said, although he admitted that he did not know who those people were.

With the rumor that many people have picked up red stones worth billions, urging people to flock to Liet hill, we went to meet many gem traders in Chau Binh area. However, these people all denied it. “That’s not true. In the past few years, no one has won a stone worth tens of millions, let alone billions. That’s just a rumor. A few days ago, I saw a lot of people so I went to see. They sometimes pick up stones, but they are worthless or very low-value stones. Hundreds of people picking up all day probably only get a few hundred thousand dong,” said a gem trader named D.

The fever of finding red stones has been rising for about half a month now. Photo: Tien Hung

Meanwhile, a gem trader with more than 30 years of experience said that the rumor that someone won a billion-dollar gem was intentionally spread by bad guys. “They bought red stones from Africa at a very cheap price. This type of stone, if you look at it, looks similar to Chau Binh red stone. These guys bought the stones and spread the rumor that people won a gem, so that people would rush to the hills to search for them. They then mixed in with the people, pretended to go to the hills to search, then picked up the stones and took them to trick inexperienced gem buyers. In fact, the stones were brought back from abroad. If you are not careful in this profession, you can easily be fooled like that,” said an anonymous man who works in gem trading.

In the past, many gem traders have lost their fortunes because of this scam. Another gem trader said that in 1991, a group of people mixed in with a group of people looking for red stones and secretly threw a handful of fake stones into the mining area. They then spread the news that the locals had just won a batch of extremely beautiful stones and were selling them to traders at a cheap price. A trader was then afraid that someone else would buy them, so he spent all his capital of more than 2 billion VND to buy them in a hurry. However, when he brought them to sell, he was shocked to discover that these stones were actually industrial stones. After just one transaction, this person suddenly fell into bankruptcy.

Image on Liet hill. Photo: Tien Hung

The Secretary of the Chau Binh Commune Party Committee said that the information that people won billions or hundreds of millions worth of precious stones was just a rumor that was not true. “It is possible that the rumor was intentionally spread by traders to make people rush to the hills to search, and if they picked up any, they would let the traders buy it. It is also possible that the rumor was intentionally spread to trick people into selling red stones bought from abroad. It has been a long time since anyone here won valuable precious stones,” said Mr. Duyen.

The red stone fever in Chau Binh once shocked the whole country in the early 90s. At that time, a group of engineers from Hanoi came here to drill for exploration and accidentally discovered red stone. At this time, the people of Chau Binh just knew that the type of stone they often encountered on the hill had such great value. Information about the extremely valuable stone quickly spread. Thousands of people from all over the country, most of whom were gangsters, flocked to Chau Binh with the hope of changing their lives.

The things that people picked up on Liet hill were mainly colored stones like this. These are stones that have no value or very low value. Photo: Tien Hung

The hills in Chau Binh were packed with diggers, creating a chaotic scene. On Highway 48 through Chau Binh, shops and restaurants were built densely to serve the red stone diggers. Stabbings and robberies occurred continuously. Hundreds of people lost their lives here. “Almost every day, motorbikes carried bodies out of the hills, dumped them on Highway 48, waiting for relatives to come and claim them. Some were stabbed to death because of fighting over territory, then robbed, others died in tunnel collapses. The most deaths were 76 people due to a tunnel collapse at Ty Hill. There were many times when tunnel collapses killed dozens of people,” said Mr. Kim Van Duyen - who at that time was a commune official, but still took the time to go up the hill to find red stone.

Tien Hung