Back from Chinatown and lunch on River Valley Road.

There was only one thing that I came back for on Temple Street--a three-color-jade fetish carved as an old man with a beard and holding a ru-i sceptre.

Some years back, Teow Li sent me a jasper-and-crystal quartz Shouzan stone carved as a little boy monk.
According to Teow Li, Shouzan stones are coveted and collected by the scholarly and the literary-minded. They are supposed to crystallize with time.

The old-man stone is from Xingjian, on the border between China and Mongolia.

Both stones are meant to be touched and placed in one's pocket.