Mercury, Hg, 水银, cinnabar, HgS, 朱砂
Cinnabar or mercury sulphide occurs naturally in relatively pure form and has been in use as a pigment since neolithic times. Red lacquerware and vermilion seal paste use this pigment.
As the choice pigment for bright vermilion red, the mineral probably was also thought to have magical qualities and may have been used as a drug since ancient times. At any rate, cinnabar is an important drug in Chinese medicine, and Chinese alchemists were obsessed with it. Mercury is highly toxic, and all handling, including mining and ingestion as a drug; and experimenting is unhealthy.
Mercury, a metal with the unusual melting point of −38.87 °C, can be produced from cinnabar by distillation. Crushed cinnabar is fired and disintegrates into sulphur dioxide and vaporized mercury. These rise into pipes that allow the fumes to escape but catch the mercury as it becomes liquid again. Because mercury has a high specific weight, impurities collect on the surface and can be easily removed. The process is simple enough, the only drawback being the toxicity of the fumes.
Toxic or not, the liquid silver held a great fascination. Qinshi huangdi 秦始皇帝, the First Emperor, who believed himself to be more than human and worthy to gain eternal life, had an underground landscape with mercury rivers and lakes built in his monumental tomb and is thought to have poisoned himself by taking massive doses of cinnabar over years.
(Strangely enough, pure mercury is not likely to cause poisoning because the body does not absorb it, even if ingested. Vapours that contain mercury ions, however, are extremely dangerous. They enter the blood and the brain and destroy proteins, especially in the nerves and the brain. Chronic poisoning eventually leads to madness and death.)
The largest historic cinnabar mines in China were in Guizhou 贵州. Yunnan was also known to possess cinnabar resources. Cinnabar and mercury production is recorded for the region in the Yuan 元 History (Yang Shouchuan 2014, 47).
Sites of mining are identified by names in Qing sources.The history of cinnabar exploitation is not well known. Specifically, the reconstruction of outputs, of mercury poisoning in mining and distillation, and possibly of protective measures is difficult.
Mercury is beyond the scope of this project. Cinnabar mines are considered only inasmuch as cinnabar and orpiment may occur together, and that silver ores might occur with or next to cinnabar.
