Chinese man hunts fortune in Mozambique

Ge and two friends analyzed their failure and concluded they needed to buy gems directly from Africa, cutting out the intermediaries.

In 2008, Ge booked a flight to Mozambique and went there with two suitcases weighing 45 kilograms. He had heavy, warm clothes for the mountainous treks between gem mines and safety gear for his motorcycle rides. Despite contracting malaria, Ge had found himself a new profession.

Apart from robbers and disease, the other problem is charlatans, he says. Once he asked a digger whether he had anything worth selling and before long the miner was dazzling Ge with a beautiful specimen that was "brilliant green from a distance". However, examining it with a magnifying glass Ge found it was fake. Such attempts to dupe potential buyers are becoming more frequent, he says.

Now that he has managed to get some money together, he is looking to hire locals to look for stones and send them to Beijing, so he can concentrate on the processing and commercial sides. But he says he hasn't found the right partners yet.

So for now he continues to look for stones, "chancing my luck and risking my life every day".