2026-03-18
23 分钟Earlier this summer, my colleague Eleanor Olcott traveled to a city in the central Chinese province of Henan.
“We’re in one of the jewelry markets in Zhengzhou.
This is a building dedicated to jewelry sales.”
This market’s name in English translates to “more gold, more silver”.
But as Eleanor walks around this eight-story building, diamonds are the main thing catching her eye.
Stall after stall glitters with them.
“You can see here there’s a lots of women trying on the shiny diamond earrings
which, to the naked eye, they look exactly the same as their natural counterparts.”
These earrings she’s talking about here aren’t made with natural diamonds,
you know, the kind dug out from the earth.
These are created in a lab and recently, their popularity has exploded.
“We’ve spoken to a couple of the shopkeepers who have been here for two to three years
and say that people are coming more and more accustomed to the concept of lab-grown diamonds.”
This shopkeeper’s telling Eleanor that there used to be a lot of natural diamond stores in this market.
But many had to close because of bad sales,
or they had to switch to selling these synthetic lab-grown stones instead.
“It was so clear that there was just like an abundant supply of diamonds.
You know, you’d ask the sellers to have a look at the diamonds
and they just bring out this like tray after tray after tray just all jiggling with glistening stones.
And it’s a very different experience to going to these more traditional diamond retailers