Discarded pearl shells are made into buttons in Yuwei village, Zhanjiang's Xuwen county, and sold to customers in big cities including Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and even exported overseas to India. Yang ...

Fabulous tales of fortunes in 1924, freshwater pearls taken from Mississippi River mussels are still told along the shores of Lake Pepin and in the declining pearl button cities like Muscatine, Iowa.