Nanshan Waterfall at Yaoli

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We paid the entrance fee, which was good for two days and included entrance to various sites in Yaoli as well as to the trail up to the falls. The trail is a one way loop and we are the only ones hiking. As I wrote in my post about Yaoli, this is a place whose tourism is being planned, but has not yet been invaded by crowds. As Dean Huang and I started up to the falls I was reminded of the pine and granite landscapes of New Hampshire and the gorges and waterfalls of my old haunt, Ithaca, N.Y.

But none of these favorite places features the vast waves of rustling feathery yellow green bamboo that we saw across the way and walked through as we descended. My Chinese friends are surprised when I tell them that we do not have this kind of bamboo forest where I live.

NanShan waterfall, I am told by a friend, but my research does not prove, is partially man made. From the base of this wonderful flow we cannot tell what is above. Is it a dam? No evidence from below. I have also been told that, due to some military secrets, the area has been at times forbidden to outsiders.

Waterfalls are my holy land and this one was a pilgrimage worthy of the hike, perfectly orchestrated for serenity and awe. Power of fast flowing water led us up to the unexpected force and magnitude of the large fall, followed by the peaceful hike down through the forest of bamboo.
We followed the sound of water rushing to find ourselves looking up a powerful wall of water.


Then we started down through the bamboo.


The trail brought us down past a small shelter with bamboo roots used to echo the curving roof lines of ancient architecture and tea harvesters finishing their day's work. The young leaves are harvested in the early and late day. When we ask around for a place to stay we find that the farmer's homes are housing the migrant workers now and so not available for us to rent rooms for the night. Across the river, we found a farmers house, shop with 3 rooms. We were offered the special room, with a television and a double bed for 40 yuan. We declined and negotiated the two separate rooms for the same price. We had dinner of fern stems there with the family kids, while the dad roasted tea leaves in a wide pan. My room was white washed, white painted beds, white linen, very soothing...sleep. Next day we hike up behind the village, past the Taoist hermits. I found fiddle head ferns, but we had eaten the stems. They don't eat the heads. And they looked perfect. Then a found a raspberry, one single orange raspberry. Dean had never seen a raspberry, he did not know what it was. He trusted me and ate it. One berry. They must grow somewhere in China.

Yaoli potters ran out of clay

A visit to Yaoli


Yaoli (translated as Inside the Ceramic Kiln) is a small village approximately 60 km outside of Jingdezhen and a short distance away from Mt. Kaolin (GaolingShan), the source of petuntze, the white feldspar that makes porcelain what it is. It is a walk back in time to what it might have been like during Ming and Qing Dynasties in a porcelain production town in the Jiangxi countryside, but no one is working in clay there anymore. Apparently the local clay ran out long ago. The well-preserved ancient ancestral halls of the Cheng family showing feudal life, classical courtyard buildings, and intriguing winding alleys tell of a different time. The village of Yaoli is set in a beautiful landscape of old-growth forests, hills and the Yaohe river valley. It is also famous for its green tea.

Yaoli is also the historic meeting place for the mobilization of the resistance war against Japan and rear office of the New Fourth Army and former residence of General Chenyi. Signs of the building of a tourist attraction for ceramics and tea consist of a few hotels, even a resort and new construction. Unlike the rebuilt tourist site towns I visited with Richard in Yunnan--LiJiang and Dali- ancient walled cities that have been turned into bustling vacation destinations for mostly Chinese tourists, busy like a theme park, it is not yet heavily promoted as a destination. A bigger road is being built from Jingdezhen, a process we watched for an hour or so while our bus waited for the gravel to be laid out over a 20 meter stretch while we watched the building of a wall at the side of the road. This was frustrating to the others on the bus, but I love to watch work.

We arrived in Yaoli by lunchtime. The vegetable available at lunch and dinner in Yaoli includes the green stems of local ferns that we will find in the woods the next morning. They don't seem to use the fiddleheads we stalk wild here in spring. In the restaurant and the home in which we spent the night, pictures of Mao, still, dominate dining room walls. Another topic, another time.

The ceramic tile roof lines of old Yaoli town layer over brick houses, courtyard and alleys.A clean fast moving river runs through the town separates the ancient town from the newer area. Bridges connect at regular intervals. Small dams break the flow.

The villagers use the river in a controlled sequence for washing vegetables, washing clothes, and sewage so as not to affect those immediately downstream. What about furthur downstream and into the future, I wonder? After lunch and an exploratory walk around the town, we started up a dusty road toward the site of the ancient pottery, as yet unconvinced of the value of the tickets sold in town to visit the kiln and pottery sites, a feudal house, a museum and the hiking trails up through virgin pine to the spectacular Nanshan Waterfall and down through bamboo forests and tea plantations. We would find these tickets, while costly, well worth the price for our two days in Yaoli and environs.
















On to the Excavation Site of the Ancient Kilns at Raozhou

There is evidence of porcelain production here from the Song (ca. 960) to the Ming Dynasty (ca 1600). I found on line a carved celadon vase from the Raozhou kilns. Shards at the site indicate that blue and white porcelains were produced here as well.The excavated foundation of these two long dragon kilns climb up a hill creating an internal draft.













The excavated remains of clay preparation pits in the ground around which the river bends are marked with explanatory signs in Chinese and English.
















Reconstructions of the pottery plant here include a potter's wheel:

An example of how wood was stacked like a roof to keep the wood dry:














A water powered hammer mill and a horizontal wheel for grinding raw material:














We can only imagine what function this piece of equipment has...
















Not everyone shares this potter's interest in kilns and clay. Dean Huang, Huang Jinlei 黄金雷, my travel buddy, is an English teacher at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute. He, as a non ceramist, knows little about things clay, but is thankfully, one who has a wide-eyed interest in all things and a particular delight in refreshing mountain air hike, intrepid wanderings and cheap local travels.
Here is Dean enjoying the roar along the hike to the waterfall I will begin to write about tomorrow.

Kiln Guys

Today I am loading the smaller of my two outermost Cape Cod gas kilns and find myself writing about kilns in Jingdezhen. Kilns there used to be wood or coal fired, but that has changed. The town used to have hundreds of stacks putting out smoky effluent of the dirty fuels. Sickly air quality has improved since they were closed in favor of gas kilns over the past 20 years. Like every other part of the ceramic process there, the firing of kilns is the province of the master. I used two of these in my stay there. This one is close to the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute, so it is the one most used by the students there.

The kiln is unloaded at eight a.m. Between 8 and 10 the makers arrive to collect their finished work. Once collected, we show the work to the owner, who, with a glance calculates the fees, paid in cash, change made from a fat wad from the pocket.

New works arrive, students fuss with beads on supports of high temperature Kanthal wire and clay. I failed miserably at this, asking the wire to do more that the weight of the stones I made would allow. To me, everything was an experiment worth stretching the limits, losses are lessons. By 10 a.m. the loaded cart is pushed on its rails into a steel and fiber car kiln.

Another day, another firing to 1300C. There is no room for the kind of experimentation with fire that is such an integral part of my clay life. The loading of this kiln is exactly as I learned for porcelain firing, so familiar and known. The kiln guys at this kiln don't smile. I like the guy at the other kiln. This second kiln, in the Old Sculpture Factory area is fired on an afternoon schedule. In by 3 p.m., out by 1. I made the mistake of bringing work there on the day off and by bike--oops. Generally, pots are hand carried. With enough pots to carry, a guy with a hand cart or one with two hanging racks on a shoulder pole can be hired to walk from the studio to the kiln.