Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites

We will surely see a nomination and subsequent inscription of Jingdezhen in the coming years. Chinese porcelain was a major global export product and Jingdezhen was the undoubted primary location for its production from the 14th century onwards.

For those who want to visit the site already, there’s always the tricky task of deciding which possible location to go to. It seems likely that this will become a serial nomination with all things related to the porcelain history of Jingdezhen scattered around town. There is a kiln site outside of the city center called Hutian, there is the Jingdezhen Ceramics Folk Museum which Zoë described in her review, and there is the Imperial Kiln Site (a.k.a. Yuyaochang Relic Site) right in the commercial heart of the city.

I visited the latter, which seems to have been geared to bigger plans already. It checks all the boxes of a Chinese archeological WHS:

• Grand entrance.
• An iconic and modern museum building designed by a renowned architecture firm (Studio Zhu Pei).
• An ‘Old Street’ filled with souvenir shops and coffee/tea bars.
• Some important-looking excavations under a protective cover (not necessarily holding original remains)

What it lacks though is good on-site interpretation: there’s a few QR-codes to scan that will tell you something about an individual object, but the overall picture and a clear narrative are missing. So I had to get the story via the info I found online. At this location, porcelain …

As I descend to hell..oh, wrong review, although one could think by the picture on the right that's where I was heading. Jingdezhen kiln sites are by no means a visit to anything such, and in fact they are quite enjoyable.

Having previously thought that the site should be akin (akiln?) to the sites in Korea and that it should be a join inscription I find that China has more to offer than the Korean "counterpart". In truth, both places have a large claim to their porcelain heritage but I suppose China's (the word CHINA is supposed to come from Jingdezhen because they make fine China) is much bigger. I wouldn't place it at the same level as the silk road but if you think about how the porcelain industry at the time was a huge thing and put China on the map, obviously it was already on the map but everyone wanted fine porcelain from China and it got traded around the world. Tell me one (non-looted) palace you visited that didn't have a porcelain vase from China (don't actually tell me I know they all don't contain one). For this reason alone I would say that Jingdezhen is worthy of cultural heritage even though a visit isn't super exciting in any way.

Jingdezhen is basically all about porcelain. Statues, signposts, the airport is even in a vase shape!! You could visit a whole number of places here. Many corners of the town still produce porcelain and …