Feb 28 - Jingdezhen (Porcelain City)

We were up early this morning.  Breakfast was scheduled for 6:30 - 8:30 and we were supposed to leave by 8:00 for the 2.5 hour drive to Jingdezhen.  I had my phone plugged in overnight to re-charge, and sometime in the middle of the night, it started receiving emails (someone must have turned on the internet access by accident).  It beeped for a lot of times, and when I looked at it in the morning, there were 41 emails waiting,  Strangely, I was able to get a few emails out from my phone before we left, so did have some communication with home.

Gavin - our local guide

We were still cruising at breakfast, but we figured we would be in soon because we were to leave the ship at 8:00.  It was expected to be a rainy day, and it was pretty overcast when we walked to the bus.  We were introduced to our local guide - Gavin.  He was a friendly, knowledgeable guy, with a good sense humor.  On the 2.5 hour drive, he talked for about 2 hours of the time, telling us about the history of the area we were traveling through, and answering the many questions different people had about the country and this area.  It was quite interesting.

Rest Stop

We stopped at a relatively new toilet rest stop, and most people got out to use the facility.  I am happy
that I am male, not female, when seeing what the facilities are like.  Faith had told Dawn to use the handicapped washrooms whenever possible, so she didn't have to use the "squatties" that seem to be common here.  At least men have urinals, but if you have to do anything else, it looks like those "squatties" are the order of the day.

Our bus

When we arrived at Jingdezhen, we drove right to the parking lot, disembarked the bus, and walked quite a ways to a brief presentation by a group of girls playing porcelain instruments.  They played 3 tunes for us, none of which were Chinese tunes.  The 2nd tune was Jingle Bells, and all three sounded really neat. 

Porcelain music

It appeared that the only instrument that wasn't made of porcelain was the cymbal.  The drum was even of porcelain, although it looked like a regular drum skin was being struck.  It was a small theatre, and by the time they started, the place was packed.  We were standing at the front, which was lucky because the chairs were behind all the standees, so those folks couldn't see anything.

Porcelain potter

Painting with cobalt

From there, we went into one of the workshops. We saw a potter spinning some bowls on a wheel.  From there, we saw where they finished the inside of the bowls, then another station to finish the outside.  Next was a station where an artist painted the pictures on the bowls with cobalt.  Then there was a station where the glaze was applied.  It is quite interesting to see how precise and talented these artisans are.  The next stop was to view some large items that had been created - there were big bowls, very big urns, huge pots, and various sized pots.  It was quite interesting.

Finisher

Finished pots

Then we went in to the kiln area.  Here we watched some workers glazing and finishing the ceramic pottery, prior to it being fired in the huge wood kiln.  This kiln was a wood fired kiln, and there were huge amounts of wood for the fires outside the building.  They had shaped some houses of this wood which was superbly stacked to look like houses.  Along the walls of the kiln building were stacked many, many rows of wood for the fires.

Some wood for the kiln

Finally, they took us to the store where purchases could be made.  There were 4 different grades of porcelain there.  This area is famous for it's white jade porcelain, which is extremely white and valuable.  Then there was some green porcelain (with a green shade in it), some red porcelain (with a shade of red in it), and the everyday porcelain, which we looked at (and of course made some purchases).

Lunch Restaurant

Rock Cod - before

After that, it was back to the bus to drive to the restaurant for an authentic Chinese lunch.  There were 9 courses in all, most of which were quite good.  There was even a rock cod, which had it's head and tail attached.  The first drink was included in the meal, but if you wanted more, it had to be payed for.  Fortunately, that meant until the bottles at the table were empty.  Each table was set with a couple bottles of beer, a bottle of 7-Up, and a couple bottles of water, so for the most part, all ten of our group were fine.

Rock Cod - after

Following lunch, we set off to return to the ship, but first we needed to stop at one more market.  This was several streets of stores, all of which seemed to be selling the same things.  It was pouring rain by this time, so even though we were out of the bus for a fairly short period of time, we were quite soaked before re-boarding for the trip home.

It was a quite uneventful trip back to the ship, raining hard all the way.  When we got back, it was a short walk from where the bus dropped us off to where the ship was docked, and the rain had let up some.  It was still raining, but not as hard.  We were cold and wet by this time, so were happy to get back to our room to get out of our wet clothes.  We had a couple hours before supper, so we watched the rest of a movie we had started the night before and only got about 15 minutes in before going to sleep.


Tonight, we feel quite tired, and are heading to bed early.  The ship cast off while we were eating, and our journey up the Yangtze River continues overnight.  Tomorrow, we will be in Wuhan, where we will be going to visit a museum.

Porcelain Music