China is a country with over five thousand years of recorded history.
Early in ancient times, Chinese people observed and studied meteorites. Although collecting minerals is an ancient Chinese tradition, few Chinese appear to have collected these stones from the sky before the great rain of Jilin Chondrites in 1976. Actually recovering meteorites based on historic descriptions is difficult. The precise sites may not always be known, and, meteorites tend to deteriorate over time because of terrestrial weathering, drifting soil, etc. Specimens may have been carelessly lost, thrown away, or ground in to medicine.