Colonel Tran Doan Thien from Ho Chi Minh City?s Tan Binh district used to be stationed along the central coasts of Ha Tinh province where he made friends with many fishermen and pearl cultivators.
Ever since he stumbled upon one lustrous pearl while looking for oysters for food, Thien dreamed of producing pearls himself.
He retired in 1985 and formed a team to raise oysters and try cultivating pearls.
?Things were difficult at that time. Nothing was certain. We had to do research, raise oysters and culture the pearls, and we could only afford to eat instant noodles,? he said.
He even had to sell his only motorbike.
?Everyone thought we [the team] were weird but we were always optimistic?.
Through trial and error, Thien?s team succeeded in producing and selling beautiful white pearls.
But he never stopped there.
Black-jet hint
Thien recalled he once visited France and saw black pearls on sale four or five times more expensive than their white counterparts due, as he later found out, to their rarity.
He decided to cultivate the elusive black pearls. However, his efforts were in vain until chatting with his wife one day he came up with an idea as she smiled, revealing healthy, but jet-black teeth. Tooth blackening used to be popular in Vietnam, and can still be seen in many older women.
Since teeth are composed of calcium like pearls, Thien thought, he could change the latter?s color if he cared to alter some basic elements from the beginning, just as his wife?s teeth had changed color.
He then altered his culturing and implanting processes and managed to produce a black pearl from Sinanodonta Jourdyi, a kind of oyster taken from southern highland Lam Dong province.
His black pearls are harvested two years after nucleus implantation and culture in freshwater. One 13-17mm pearl goes for US$1,000-$2,000.
State secret
Hearing Vietnam was able to produce black pearls from freshwater oysters, experts and entrepreneurs from Japan, France, Taiwan and China flocked to his house.
They all admired and were surprised at his lustrous black pearls.
However, they were surprised even more after he rejected their million dollar business proposals.
The colonel explained his method was a ?state secret? and could not be divulged to foreigners.
However, he promised to show a select number of devoted and trustworthy cultivators how to make black pearls from freshwater oysters on the condition they not sell the know-how to foreign countries.
