Fragments of A Global Past: Ceramics Manufacture in Song-Yuan-Ming Jingdezhen

Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient 52 (2009) 117-152 www.brill.nl/jesho
Fragments of a Global Past:

Ceramics Manufacture in Song-Yuan-Ming
Jingdezhen
Anne Gerritsen*
Abstract
This essay explores textual genres related to the production of ceramics in Jingdezhen,
including maps, literati collections, the literature of connoisseurship, local gazetteers, and
merchant manuals. An analysis of these genres brings the Chinese textual record of ceram-
ics into sharper focus and reveals what has remained unwritten. Whereas European writings
on Chinese ceramics from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries dwell on modes of
manufacture in a global context, Chinese writers generally ignore matters of technology
and commerce beyond the confines of the Chinese realm. These omissions emerge in part
from the peculiarities of the genres within which these writings have been transmitted.
Cet essai examine les différents genres de textes qui ont trait à la production de la céramique
dans Jingdezhen. Parmi ces textes, il se trouve des cartes géographiques, des collections
d’écrits de ‘literati’, des monographies locales et des manuels de commerce. L’analyse de ces
genres permet d’approfondir notre compréhension de la tradition écrite au sujet de la céra-
mique, tout en révélant en même temps, ce qui reste implicite en ces textes. Les auteurs
chinois ne s’attardent pas aux questions de technologie, ni au commerce au-delà des confins
de l’Empire chinois. Le présent essai suggère que ces omissions s’expliquent par les conven-
tions des genres auxquels ces écrits appartiennent.
Keywords
ceramics manufacture, local history, global history, genre, Jingdezhen
*) Anne Gerritsen, Asia Research Institute (NUS) and History Department, Warwick
University, Great Britain, a.t.gerritsen@warwick.ac.uk.
I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers and fellow members of the panel
of the 2007 annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies at which this paper was
initially presented: Professors Bettine Birge, Ihara Hiroshi, Christian de Pee, Sue Takashi,
and Angela Schottenhammer. I am grateful to the Asia Research Institute in Singapore for
providing me with the opportunity to develop my ideas further. Christian de Pee’s guidance
and detailed comments helped this paper to improve a great deal. All remaining errors are,
of course, my own.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/156852009X405366
118 A. Gerritsen / JESHO 52 (2009) 117-152
Introduction
The Yuan-dynasty (1272-1368) poet and official Hong Yanzu 洪焱祖
(1267-1329) wrote the following poem while he was in Hangzhou 杭州:
A single vessel completes my earlier purchases,

At once better and newer than earlier shapes.
From beginning to end a hundred artisans were involved,
Giving pleasure to people from all directions.
The abilities of carvers may be boundless,

But what purer transformations than those of soaking and rubbing?
Its impression is both red and purple;
We spend money like water on mud and dust!1
These lines suggest that Hong was an avid collector of ceramics: his descrip-
tion of the shape of his pot “better and newer” than vessels he had previ-
ously purchased (zheng xian yang you xin 爭先樣又新) and “spending
money like water” (gungun fu 滾滾付) reveal him to be more than an occa-
sional buyer.2 Hong valued the piece not merely for its shape and color, but
for its craftsmanship. He recognized that his desire for the piece and his
willingness to part with his money were inspired by the skills of its manu-
facture, referred to by the term jianmo 漸磨. The latter phrase has come to
mean “to immerse” or “to instill through teaching,” but as the Song-dynasty
(960-1279) scholar Zeng Gong 曾鞏 (1019-1083) wrote: “Of old the
transformations of pottery and iron were achieved through soaking and
rubbing without the hardship of applying pressure or cutting” ( gu you
jianmo taoye zhi yi, er wu anzhi caoqie zhi nan 故有漸磨陶冶之易, 而無按
致操切之難).3 Ceramics and iron goods, Zeng’s statement suggests, were
1)
Hong Yanzu 洪焱祖, “Expressing my feelings while staying in Hangzhou: two poems”
寓杭有感二首. In Hong Yanzu, Xingting zhai gao 杏庭摘槀 (SKQS edition): 13a. The
poem reads: 一器成初售 / 爭先樣又新 / 低昂百工手 / 鼓舞四方人 / 雕刻知何極 /
漸磨豈易淳 / 光陰併紅紫 / 滾滾付泥塵.
2)
It is hard to determine what this pot might have looked like, as we only know it was a
reddish-purple color. Nigel Wood has described purple-red wares, created by adding a cop-
per pigment high in tin oxide to the bluish Jun glaze, creating a color effect that may be
described as both red and purple. See Nigel Wood, Chinese Glazes: Their Origins, Chemistry,
and Recreation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999): 172.
3)
Zeng Gong 曾鞏, “Second letter to Wang Jiefu” 與王介甫第二書. In Zeng Gong, Yuan-
feng lei gao 元豐類藁 (SKQS edition): 16.8a.
Fragments of a Global Past 119
the product of natural transformations rather than the outcome of invasive

procedures such as pressing or carving. A potter creates out of earth and
water, mimicking the original process of creation instead of adding further
decorations to existing material.4 All this is part of the allure of Hong’s new
piece, a sentiment he deems to share with people from the four directions
(si fang ren 四方人).
If Hong were a keen collector of ceramics, his enthusiasm did not extend
to an appreciation of the potter’s place of work, as another of his poems
demonstrates:
The [art of ] pottery [taught by] Shun gave guidance to Kong,5

The bones of the mountain in the end turn to powder.
On the outskirts, many pestles pound the earth,
On the river, half the boats transport mud.
Wind and mist render the autumn even gloomier,

The road is entirely obscured by shards of pottery.
How come my letter of appointment sent me here,
Where there is no way for old and young to have proper ceremony?6
Hong Yanzu was no stranger to the ceramics industry. Born toward the end
of the Southern Song in Huizhou’s 徽州 She county 歙縣, he spent much of
his career in academic posts under the Yuan government, before assuming
a post as headmaster of Changxiang Academy 長薌書院, located in the
kiln town of Jingdezhen 景德鎮.7 The poem conjures up an unattractive
4)
The remainder of Zeng’s quote confirms this: the reference is to human qualities, flaws
will therefore always emerge sooner or later.
5)
The pottery skills of Shun, the last of the mythical Five Emperors, are mentioned in Sima
Qian’s 司馬遷 (145-86 BCE) Shiji 史記. Shun is said to have made pottery in a place called
Taocheng 陶城 (“Potters Town”) on the banks of a river. “The vessels he made on the bank
were all made with quality and free of defect.” See William Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe’s
Records (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994): 12. The analogy between the shap-
ing of clay to produce useful pots and the molding of moral character is frequently invoked
in Chinese statecraft writing, as is the metaphor of a carpenter bending and shaping wood.
See Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1997): 19-20.
6)
Hong Yanzu, “Observations one autumn morning in Fuliang: three poems” 浮梁秋曉書
事三首. In Hong Yanzu, Xingting zhai gao (SKQS edition): 12a. The poem reads: 舜陶開
利孔 / 山骨竟為虀 / 野碓多舂土 / 溪船半載泥 / 風煙秋更慘 / 瓦礫路全迷 / 隨牒何來此 /
無階老稚圭.
7)
Hong served in Confucian schools in Pingjiang 平江路, Shaoxing 紹興路, and Quzhou
衢州路 circuits. See Zhongguo lidai renming dacidian 中國歷代人名大辭典 (Shanghai:
image of the town, marred by the pounding of water-powered hammers

that break up the porcelain stone mined nearby, boats bringing in muddy
clay from farther afield, and dust and shards found everywhere around
ceramic production sites. When Hong wrote this poem in the first decades
of the fourteenth century, Jingdezhen was rapidly becoming the world’s
premier site of porcelain manufacture, mass-producing wares for markets
throughout the empire and beyond. However, the noise and the dust are
not so much the cause of Hong’s distress as emblems of his sense of isola-
tion and lack of recognition.
Those sentiments are echoed in another poem Hong wrote in Fuliang
浮梁 county, where Jingdezhen was located. In likening himself to the
cowherd Ning Qi 甯戚 and the Tang scholar Han Yu 韓愈 (768-824),
Hong alludes to the complaint of a loyal minister’s lack of recognition:
Ning Qi was a man whose talents were only recognized by Duke Huan 桓
of Qi 齊 (d. 643 BCE) after the latter had heard Ning Qing’s songs as he
tended his cows outside the walls.8 Han Yu argued that it takes a rare indi-
vidual to be able to recognize talent.9 Hong claims to have felt out of place
in Fuliang county and to have experienced his time in Jingdezhen as a
punishment: “Alas, I have to remain here for three years. How come I do
not have a heart of iron? Just staying here my hair will go grey early.”10
These references to Ning Qi and Han Yu place Hong in the role of the
unrecognized minister, which was a familiar trope in Chinese literary writ-
ings. However, it was especially pertinent under Yuan rule, when South-
erners (nanren 南人), such as Hong, found their entry into the imperial
bureaucracy blocked by legal structures that favored Mongols, Central
Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999): 1781. Hong’s collected works, Xingting zhai gao, contain
prefaces by the Confucian scholar Wei Su 危素 (1295-1372) and by the scholar-official
Song Lian 宋濂 (1310-1381).
8)
The story features in the Lisao 離騷, the opening piece in the Songs of Chu (Chuci 楚辭).
The assumed author of the Lisao, Qu Yuan 屈原 (332-295 BCE), epitomizes the figure of
the minister whose true loyalty is not recognized by his lord.
9)
The reference is to Han Yu’s retelling of the Bo Le 伯樂 story, which highlights the
importance of a ruler’s ability to recognize and select talent. Bo Le was famous for his abil-
ity to select excellent horses, but Han Yu rated Bo Le as more important than the outstand-
ing horses themselves, arguing that there may be many outstanding horses, but without the
talent to spot and select them, their talents are wasted.
10)
Hong Yanzu, “Observations one autumn morning in Fuliang: three poems.” In Hong
Yanzu, Xingting zhai gao: 12a.
Asians, and the residents of northern China who had submitted to Jin-
dynasty (1115-1234) rule (Hanren 漢人).11
Hong’s Fuliang poems express his distaste for the manufacture of ceram-
ics, yet his Hangzhou poem shows him to be a man who was fond enough
of ceramics to spend money like water on expanding his collection. There
are several disconnections here: a spatial one between Hangzhou and
Fuliang, and a presumed temporal one between the moments of composi-
tion.12 More significantly, Hong’s texts fail to connect the appreciation of
fine ceramics with the knowledge of where and how it was manufactured.
Although Hong had both, the two remain entirely segregated in his writ-
ings. This sense of disconnection between the polished porcelain itself and
the dusty kilns that produced it, between connoisseurship and kiln town
administration, forms one of the main themes of my present study.
This essay explores the disjointed, fragmentary ways in which ceramics
and kiln towns are represented across a variety of late-imperial literary gen-
res, including maps, the literature of connoisseurship, local gazetteers, and
merchant manuals. This exploration of the textual record of ceramics and
ceramics manufacture will reveal a fourth, global disconnection: between
the manufacture of fine ceramics in Jingdezhen and the web of connec-
tions established by the trade in porcelain which linked the Yuan dynasty
to the wider world.13 A number of sources have come down to
us that chronicle the global trajectories of ceramic objects crafted in
Jingdezhen. Chinese merchants exported ceramics using overland trade
networks as well as sea routes along the Indo-Chinese coast, sailing through
11)
See, for example, Elizabeth Endicott-West, Mongolian Rule in China: Local Administra-
tion in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, 1989): 13.
12)
Although we have no precise dates for these poems, we can reasonably assume that those
composed in Hangzhou were not written at the same time as the poems composed during
Hong’s tenure in Fuliang.
13)
See Barbara Harrisson, “The Ceramic Trade across the South China Sea c. a.d. 1350-
1650.” In Southeast Asia-China Interactions, ed. Geoff Wade (Kuala Lumpur: The Malay-
sian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2007): 489-505. A great deal has been written
about the maritime trade between China and Southeast Asia in a more general sense. In
2006, the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient devoted an entire issue
(49,4) to the subject, edited by Kenneth Hall. See also Billy So, Prosperity, Region, and
Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946-1368 (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Asia Center, 2000), and the studies included in The Emporium of the
World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000-1400, ed. Angela Schottenhammer (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
2001), and in The East Asian Maritime World 1400-1800: Its Fabrics of Power and Dynamics
of Exchanges, ed. Angela Schottenhammer (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2007).
the Malacca Straits and into the Indian Ocean. From there, traders deliv-
ered ceramics to markets in Sri Lanka and India, throughout the Persian
Gulf, and along the East African coast.14 A Brief Record of Island Barbarians
(Dao yi zhi lüe 岛夷志略) of 1349, written by the fourteenth-century
traveler Wang Dayuan 汪大淵 (fourteenth century), describes his visits to
Southeast Asia between 1328 and 1333 and to Africa between 1335 and
1339, and he makes extensive reference to Chinese ceramics.15 Materials
related to Jingdezhen, however, remain silent on these global connections.
Objects manufactured in Jingdezhen were exported far beyond the Chinese
realm, but the global dimension of local ceramics production remains
entirely invisible in sources that relate to the locality. This disjuncture
between global connections and the local record, as we will see below,
emerges in different ways throughout the late-imperial genres under dis-
cussion. An exploration of writings related to ceramics across different
genres reveals that this perceived disjuncture emerges from the specific
geographies of the Chinese textual record. The features that give shape to
the textual genres discussed below are such that certain aspects of ceramics
come prominently into view while others remain obscured. This discus-
sion of the geographies of textual genre, with its apparent disconnections
and disjunctures, will help to explain why the Chinese textual record of
ceramics features extensive descriptions of different wares for the connois-
seur or detailed personal evaluations for the collector, but contains hardly
any reference to the global dimensions of the ceramics trade.
The Ceramics Trade in a Global Perspective

Fine porcelains from China arrived in Europe in small quantities for the
highest elite as early as the fourteenth century, but from the early seven-
teenth century onward they entered European ports in ever increasing
quantities. Throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
14)
See Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5: Chemistry and
Chemical Technology: part 12, Ceramic Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004): 728. The chapter entitled “Remote Transfer” deals extensively with the influence of
Chinese ceramics in South and West Asia as well as Africa. The presence of ceramics in all
these regions is amply demonstrated by the archaeological record.
15)
For a translation of parts of the Dao yi zhi lüe, see W. W. Rockhill, “Notes on the Rela-
tions and Trade of China with the Eastern Archipelago and the Coast of the Indian Ocean
During the Fourteenth Century.” T’oung Pao 16,2 (1915): 61-73, 435-55.
material culture of Chinese design enjoyed a widespread popularity

throughout Europe.16 Porcelain aroused a broad curiosity among Europe-
ans, spurring on enterprising individuals to copy the material or enquire
about its provenance.17 One such individual was a Jesuit by the name of
François Xavier d’Entrecolles (1664-1741), who arrived in China in 1698,
and spent time in Jingdezhen in the early eighteenth century.18 His famous
letters, sent from Jingdezhen in 1712 and 1722, have long formed the
basis for understanding the manufacture of Chinese porcelain for ceramics
scholars in Europe and North America.19 These letters draw upon
d’Entrecolles’s own observations and those of his converts, many of whom
worked in the potteries, as well as d’Entrecolles’s readings of Chinese texts
on porcelain.20 D’Entrecolles assumed that a “detailed description of all
that is concerned with this sort of work [i.e., the making of this beautiful
16)
David Porter discusses the widespread appeal of the exotic aspects of Chinese consumer
goods as resulting from an earlier interest in understanding and deciphering Chinese cul-
ture. See David Porter, Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2001): 133-4.
17)
The Elector of Saxony, Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), had in his retinue the scientist
Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682-1719) and the mathematician Ehrenfried Walther von
Tschirnhaus (1651-1708), who worked on recipes to produce porcelain in the early eigh-
teenth century. By 1709, their experiments had yielded success and Augustus the Strong
established the porcelain factory at Meissen. Meissen porcelain is produced until this day.
See Janet Gleeson, The Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story of the Invention of European
Porcelain (London: Bantam, 1998); Martin Schönfeld, “Was There a Western Inventor of
Porcelain?” Technology and Culture 39,4 (1998): 716-27.
18)
A brief biography of d’Entrecolles can be found in Robert Tichane, Ching-te-chen: Views
of a Porcelain City (New York: New York Institute for Glaze Research, 1983): 49. According
to this biography, d’Entrecolles became a member of the Society of Jesus in 1682, and died
in Beijing in 1741. His interests included the raising of silk worms, the manufacture of
artificial flowers, and inoculation against smallpox. On the latter, see the study by Larissa
Heinrich, “How China Became the ‘Cradle of Smallpox’: Transformations in Discourse,
1726-2002.” positions: east asia cultures critique 15,1 (2007): 7-34.
19)
The Jesuit Jean-Baptiste du Halde included the letters by Père d’Entrecolles in his
Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l’empire de la
Chine, of 1735. The letters were also included in the 1781 Jesuit collection entitled Lettres
édifiantes et curioses de Chine. See Isabelle Vissière and Jean-Louis Vissière, eds, Lettres édi-
fiantes et curieuses de Chine par des Missionaires Jésuites, 1702-1776 (Paris: Garnier-Flamma-
rion, 1979). Complete English translations of these letters have been included in numerous
works on ceramics, including Tichane, Ching-te-chen: 51-128.
20)
D’Entrecolles claims to have read the Fuliang County Gazetteer (Fuliang xianzhi 浮梁縣志).
See Tichane, Ching-te-chen: 52.
porcelain] should be of some use in Europe.”21 “All that is concerned with

this sort of work” included general descriptions of the town, the size of its
population and how it was situated, the details of the many processes of
porcelain manufacture, the construction of the furnaces, and the economic
details of production. The items produced for overseas markets were usu-
ally made from models, which created specific difficulties for the potters:
If it has only a little fault it is rejected by the Europeans who do not wish anything that
is not perfect, and then it remains in the hands of the manufacturer who cannot sell it
to the Chinese because it does not suit their taste. It is consequently necessary that the
pieces that are taken carry the cost of those that are rejected.22
D’Entrecolles’s observations shed light on the ways in which the Chinese

potters could cater for far-away markets through the use of models, on the
financial risks they took in that production, and on the economics of this
global trade.
Of course it was not only the Europeans who desired ceramics from
Jingdezhen, as customers came from all over the world. During the Song
mainly bluish-white (qingbai 青白) wares were exported to the Middle
East, followed from the early fourteenth century onward—after the so-called
“blue-and-white” (qing hua 青花) revolution—by large plates (designed
for non-Chinese culinary practices) decorated with cobalt blue in Islamic
designs on a white background.23 Some of the cobalt used to create these
early designs came from the Middle East itself, and was delivered to the
ceramics producers by Muslim merchants who were omnipresent through-
out Yuan China, thus suggesting a dynamic relationship between producer,
merchant, and consumer in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centu-
ries.24 The magnificent collections of Yuan wares from Jingdezhen in the
Ardabil shrine (in today’s Iran) and in the Topkapi Seray in Istanbul testify
21)
Tichane, Ching-te-chen: 51.
22)
Tichane, Ching-te-chen: 96.
23)
The dating of these export wares is based on archaeological work in the Jingdezhen area,
much of which was supervised by Liu Xinyuan. Liu argues that no evidence remains of
large plates with Islamic designs from before 1328, and that Zhu Yuanzhang, the later
Hongwu emperor (r. 1368-1398), put a stop to this production when he invaded the area
in 1352. See Liu Xinyuan, “Imperial Export Porcelain from Late Yuan to Early Ming.”
Oriental Art Magazine 45,1 (1999): 98-100.
24)
Under the Yuan government, Islam was awarded a legal status equal to Buddhism and
Christianity, and Muslim merchants were granted the right to settle in Yuan territory. It
must be pointed out, however, that the precise origins of the cobalt used in blue-and-white
to the quantity and quality of Chinese export products to the Middle East-
ern markets.25
We know from the arrival of the first porcelain in Europe that Jingde-
zhen blue-and-white also made its way to India: Vasco Da Gama (1460/
9-1524) acquired a piece on his first visit to India in 1499 and delivered it
to the King of Portugal upon his return. By 1520, the Portuguese sent their
demands of specific porcelain designs directly to the manufacturers in
Jingdezhen.26 In India, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1592-1666) was
known for his collection of Chinese ceramics, and Indian Muslim traders
were amongst the most active distributors of Chinese ceramics throughout
the Indian Ocean, even though Hindu prohibitions prevented porcelain
from becoming widespread in India itself.27 From the early seventeenth
century onward, private kilns in Jingdezhen manufactured large quantities
of porcelain specifically for the Dutch market.28 Maura Rinaldi’s study
details the features and designs of this so-called kraak porcelain which is
not only present in Dutch collections of porcelain today but also grace
the dinner tables and interiors depicted in the paintings of the period.29
ceramics decorations did not only change over time, but still continues to be the subject of
scholarly debate.
25)
The Ardabil collection holds Song and Yuan Longquan wares, white wares, and “shufu”
wares, as well as 37 Yuan-dynasty blue-and-white wares from Jingdezhen. The most detailed
study of the Ardabil collection is John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil
Shrine (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1956). The Topkapi collection includes
40 Yuan-dynasty blue-and-white wares. See John Alexander Pope, Fourteenth-Century Blue-
and-White: A Group of Chinese Porcelains in the Topkapu Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul (Washington,
D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers, 1952).
26)
Robert Finlay, “The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History.” Journal of
World History 9,2 (2005): 142.
27)
Hindu regulations prescribe the use of non-porous materials for the preparation and
consumption of food. Despite the non-porous nature of porcelain, it was categorized with
earthenware and stoneware as porous, and hence not adopted for culinary use. See Finlay,
“The Pilgrim Art”: 158.
28)
Christiaan Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982) still
provides a good introduction to the China trade of the Dutch East India Company. Lothar
Ledderose discusses the significant impact of the Dutch merchants in the early seventeenth
century, which coincided precisely with the time when imperial orders for Jingdezhen
porcelains dropped off. See Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Pro-
duction in Chinese Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998): 88-97.
29)
Christiaan Jörg, “Chinese Porcelain for the Dutch in the Seventeenth Century: Trading
Networks and Private Enterprise.” In The Porcelains of Jingdezhen, ed. Rosemary E. Scott
(London: Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 1993): 183-205.
During the Tianqi (1621-1627) and Chongzhen (1628-1644) reign peri-

ods, wares produced in Jingdezhen were particularly sought after in the
Japanese art market. They were not “imperial wares,” as effective control
over local manufacture had radically diminished by the end of the Wanli
reign (1573-1620). They were rather simple, spontaneous designs created
at private kilns, quite possibly specifically made for Japanese consumers,
who valued their unpretentiousness and assigned them a central place in
the newly-emerging forms of the tea-ceremony.30 And finally, as early as
1662, settlers in the American colonies ordered porcelain from China.31
For the readers of Père d’Entrecolles, the distance these objects had trav-
eled before they arrived in Europe was part of the appeal. His letters pres-
ent their readers with information on all aspects of ceramics, including
how and where they were made, how they were produced for different
markets across the globe, and which styles and decorations were favored by
the different consumers.32 His letters found a broad European audience
hungry for precisely this kind of knowledge, even if the information came
too late for the Elector of Saxony, whose factory in Meissen had started
producing high-quality ceramics from 1710. The French missionary Louis
le Comte (1655-1728), sent to China by Louis XIV in 1685, found a
similarly broad audience for his writings. Le Comte wrote a series of letters
in which he gave detailed accounts of his observations in China, including
remarks about the omnipresence of ceramics in ordinary households.33 Le
30)
For a more in-depth discussion of the circumstances that led to this appreciation in
Japan, and of the types of wares dating from this period that are only found in Japan, see
Colin Sheaf, “Chinese Ceramics and Japanese Tea Taste in the Late Ming Period.” In Scott,
The Porcelains of Jingdezhen: 165-82. Christiaan Jörg agrees that the wares of the 1620s and
1630s were specifically created for use in the Japanese tea ceremony. See Jörg, “Chinese
Porcelain”: 188-90.
31)
David Sanctuary Howard and Conrad Edick Wright, New York and the China Trade
(New York: New York Historical Society, 1984): 61, quoted in William Sargent, “‘China, a
great variety’: Documenting Porcelains for the American Market.” In Scott, The Porcelains
of Jingdezhen: 207. See also Jean Gordon Lee, Philadelphians and the China Trade, 1784-
1844 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984).
32)
See Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: 100.
33)
“As for Porcelain, it is such an ordinary moveable, that it is the Ornament of every
House; the Tables, the Side-boards, and every Kitchin is cumber’d with it, for they eat and
drink out of it, it is their ordinary Vessel.” Louis le Comte, Memoirs and Observations Typo-
graphical, Physical, Mathematical, Mechanical, Natural, Civil, and Ecclesiastical, Made in a
Late Journey through the Empire of China, and Published in Several Letters Particularly Upon
the Chinese Pottery and Varnishing, the Silk and Other Manufactures, the Pearl Fishing, the
History of Plants and Animals, Description of Their Cities and Publick Works, Number of
Comte, like d’Entrecolles, discussed the process of manufacture and the

qualities of the different wares, as well as economic aspects of the trade
with the Europeans.34 The Jesuit letters, together with the material culture
from Asia that entered the European markets, sparked off what has been
referred to as chinoiserie, or the craze for fanciful designs and styles widely
believed to be Chinese.35 As Maxine Berg and others have shown, it is pos-
sible to detect connections between the European interest in finely manu-
factured goods from China, the European fascination with the details of
Chinese production methods provided by writers like d’Entrecolles, the
rise of state porcelain factories in Germany and France, and the beginnings
of the industrial revolution in Britain.36
Chinese writings on ceramics, as the discussion below will make clear,
form a striking contrast with these European texts. Shaped by conventions
of genre, Chinese texts represent the landscape of ceramic production in
very different ways. Each genre discussed here, ranging from maps to
poetry, from administrative compilations to manuals for merchants, reveals
merely a part of the landscape of Chinese ceramics. It is only by combining
these fragments that we can view the complete picture. The discussion
below begins with maps, moves on to discuss literary collections and the
literature of connoisseurship, local gazetteers, and manuals for merchants.
The landscape of ceramics remains a Chinese landscape, shaped by the
peculiarities of late-imperial Chinese genres. The vista provided by these
texts never broadens to such an extent as to yield a global perspective.
Rather than seeking to use the European record as a blueprint for Chinese
ceramic texts, it is therefore more fruitful to evaluate the Chinese sources
in the context of the conventions of the genres that shaped them.
People, Their Language, Manners and Commerce, Their Habits, Oeconomy, and Government,
the Philosophy of Confucius, the State of Christianity: With Many Other Curious and Useful
Remarks (London: Benj. Tooke and Sam. Buckley, 1697): 154. See also Anne Gerritsen,
“Ceramics for Local and Global Markets: The Jingdezhen Agora of Ceramic Technologies”
(unpublished manuscript).
34)
Comte, Memoirs and Observations: 154-8.
35)
Chinoiserie forms the subject of a wide range of scholarship, but the subject is discussed
most perceptively in Porter, Ideographia: 133-92.
36)
See Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods
in the Eighteenth Century.” Past and Present 182 (2004): 85-142. See also Ledderose,
Ten Thousand Things: 101.
Maps and Administrative Boundaries

In order to begin our exploration of the different textual representations of
China’s foremost site of ceramics manufacture, it may be useful to see how
it appears on Chinese maps. Cartographic representations of an area can
reveal something of the wider perceptions of that space and the context
within which a site was visualized, as maps are a way of assigning meaning
to space and imposing order upon it. As Carolyn Cartier has pointed out,
maps, like texts, are “selective representations and social constructions of
reality.”37 Most Chinese maps serve an administrative purpose, and reveal
space in its administrative configuration. Towns such as Jingdezhen, how-
ever, did not have a specific place within that administrative order.38 Popu-
lated places noted for their commercial or technological prowess and which
had a duty to pay taxes but did not have the status of a county seat (xian
縣) were generally referred to as zhen 鎮, a term variously translated as
“township” or “market town.”39 This position of zhen outside of the admin-
istrative structure forced mapmakers to devise ways of representing places
of economic importance that lacked an administrative function. The maps
of the area surrounding Jingdezhen present different solutions to this
cartographic problem, but they consistently represent the kiln site as
unconnected to any particular administrative structure. A closer look at
more detailed maps of the township, however, brings into focus the pres-
ence of the administrative structure within the town’s own boundaries.
37)
Carolyn Cartier, “The Evolution of a Geographical Idea.” Modern China 28,1 (2002):
79-142.
38)
The term zhen is also used to refer to strategic locations in frontier regions, particularly
during periods of frontier conflict such as the North-South Division and the Song
dynasty.
39)
There is a great deal of literature on the subject of townships. In a recent study of town-
ships in the Yangzi Delta between the Song and Ming, Richard von Glahn highlights some
of the most salient points in their historiography. See Richard von Glahn, “Towns
and Temples: Urban Growth and Decline in the Yangzi Delta, 1100-1400.” In The
Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, eds Paul J. Smith and Richard von Glahn
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003): 176-211. Much of the
Chinese-language scholarship on the subject focuses on the Ming and Qing periods, such
as the work of Fan Shuzhi 樊樹志 and Liu Shiji 劉石吉. Japanese scholarship, in contrast,
has highlighted the significance of the formative period of townships during the Tang
and Song dynasties. See, for example, the work of Mori Masao 森正夫, Shiba Yoshinobu
斯波義信, and Umehara Kaoru 梅原郁. Von Glahn’s essay examines the period between
the growth of the townships during the Song dynasty and the second era of proliferation
during the late Ming and Qing dynasties. See Von Glahn, “Towns and Temples”: 178.
Take, for example, two of the oldest extant maps of China. The Map of
the Tracks of Yu (Yu ji tu 禹跡圖) was carved in stone in 1136, and repre-
sents space in accordance with a grid, each square of which represents
100 li.40 Focusing on what is now Jiangxi, we see an area named Raozhou
饒州, marked without any provincial (or prefectural) boundaries. The map
highlights the strategic significance of the river for this area, and Raozhou’s
proximity to locations to the northeast as well as the south, but it reveals
little about lower-order units or connections between places on the
map. However, Convenient Maps of Administrative Divisions Through the
Ages (Lidai dili zhizhang tu 歷代地理指掌圖), also dating from the twelfth
century, does indicate boundaries and Raozhou appears as one of the pre-
fectures under Jiangnan East Circuit (Jiangnan donglu 江南東路).41 These
two Song-dynasty maps reveal space ordered by administrative hierarchies:
the names of places on the Map of the Tracks of Yu refer to administrative
centers; the lines on the Convenient Maps of Administrative Divisions
Through the Ages delineate administrative boundaries, hiding from view
sites without an administrative purpose such as Jingdezhen.
Of course, practically speaking such maps of the empire could not
accommodate a level of detail that would include townships. Makers of
maps drawn to a smaller scale, however, had to confront the question of
how to represent non-administrative spaces. Maps of the Wide Realm
(Guang yu tu 廣輿圖), dated 1566, includes the township of Jingde on the
provincial map for Jiangxi.42 The map does not indicate county boundaries
40)
The date of the carving of the map is not the same as the date of the map itself, as the
names of the administrative units reveal. The information contained in the map might have
been compiled as early as 1080-1094. Rubbings of the stele are held in the Library of
Congress, at Harvard University, and in the Chinese National Library. For a discussion of
the map, see Joseph Needham and Wang Ling, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3:
Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1954): 547-8. For a general introduction to the subject of Chinese maps and
cartography, see Richard J. Smith, Chinese Maps: Images of “All Under Heaven” (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996). On early cartography in China, see Kuei-sheng Chang,
“The Han Maps: New Light on Cartography in Classical China.” Imago Mundi (1979):
9-17. On the use of the grid on this map, see David Woodward, “The Image of the Spher-
ical Earth.” Perspecta 25 (1989): 2-15.
41)
See Shui Anli 稅安禮, Lidai dili zhizhang tu 歷代地理指掌圖 (1185; repr. Shanghai:
Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995): map 46. The map is available in a number of modern
editions.
42)
Maps of the Wide Realm is based on a Yuan-dynasty map by Zhu Siben 朱思本 (1273-ca.
1335), updated by Luo Hongxian 羅洪先 (1504-1564) and published after his death.
within the prefectures, and prefectural seats are merely marked by square
boxes. Jingdezhen appears to the north of the river Chang 昌, further
downriver from Fuliang county. Across the Chang the map shows the
mountain ranges and the county town of Leping 樂平. Beyond the Jiangxi
boundary in what was the Southern Metropolitan Region (Nan Zhili 南直隸)
around Nanjing during the Ming, and which became Anhui 安徽 in 1667,
we see the Huizhou counties of Wuyuan 婺原, Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130-1200)
ancestral place, the pawnbrokers’ home of Xiuning 休寧, and the famous
tea county of Qimen 祁門. Jingdezhen’s position on this map suggests the
existence of convenient through-routes that could facilitate the flow of
people and goods northward on the Chang via Huizhou, or southward via
Lake Poyang 鄱陽湖 and the river Gan 贛. In the absence of internal
boundaries, locations such as Jingdezhen appear to exist outside the grid of
administrative hierarchies. The Jiajing-era (1522-1567) atlas Maps of the
Realm of the Great Ming (Da Ming yuditu 大明輿地圖), which includes a
Jiangxi provincial map, also represents Jingdezhen as if suspended in
(administrative) space, without any adequate connections nearby. A 1683
map of Raozhou prefecture represents Lake Poyang on the right-hand side
of the map (i.e., the west is on the right).43 Fuliang county is on the lower
left-hand side, with Jingdezhen just above it between the rivers. This map
reveals Jingdezhen as a rather heavily populated and busy place but, as in
the other maps, one that nevertheless falls outside the administrative struc-
ture represented by walled cities.
Maps of the town of Jingde itself, however, reveal a slightly different
picture. A 1682 map of the township, for example, shows the town as
being located on the west bank of the river and surrounded by a wall on
all sides. The space inside that wall is entirely taken up by buildings.
Those buildings, numbering four in total and all drawn with courtyards
inside and pillars in front, are labeled “imperial kiln factory” ( yu yao chang
禦窯厰), the term used to refer to the kilns that manufactured wares
ordered by the imperial court and that operated under the supervision of
an officially appointed administrator.44 In other words, the town itself, in
Page 442 in the Xuxiu Siku quanshu edition of Maps of the Wide Realm has a map of Jiangxi
province.
43)
The map was included in the 1683 edition of the Provincial Gazetteer of Jiangxi. See Xie
Min 謝旻, comp., Jiangxi tongzhi 江西通志 (1683; SKQS edition): huitu.11b-12a.
44)
Margaret Medley, “Ching-te Chen and the Problem of the Imperial Kilns.” Bulletin of
the School of Oriental and African Studies 29,2 (1966): 326-38. Cf. Tsing Yuan, “The Porce-
lain Industry at Ching-te-chen 1550-1700.” Ming Studies 6 (1978): 45-53.
this representation, seems to exist only as an extension of the bureaucratic

apparatus in charge of provisioning the court with luxury goods. As we
zoom in from the empire to the province, the prefecture, and the town-
ship, the administrative structure gradually comes into view. Maps served
largely as administrative tools, to reveal space as ordered and controlled
from the seat of power at the capital. Larger-scale maps may well suggest
the administrator’s inability to capture the status of the township in terms
of administrative purposes. The map of Jingdezhen itself shows the town
as an administrator’s ideal: taken up in its entirety by buildings that serve
the purpose of the central administration.
Ceramics in the Literary Collections of Scholars and Officials

If maps only reveal a small glimpse of the Jingdezhen landscape—shaped
by the needs of administrators and overseers—the collections of writings
by literati provide equally limited views. In this case the limitations are
thrown up by the types of materials included in such collections: texts
intended for the perusal of fellow officials and scholars, composed in a
variety of genres, such as memorials to the emperor, poems in various
forms, letters and congratulatory notes, prefaces and postscripts, biogra-
phies, and eulogies. Such writings were intended for an audience of like-
minded thinkers and officials, producing a discourse of adherence to
prevailing ideological convictions.
The local landscape that emerges from such texts is the landscape of the
literati experience. See, for example, a text composed by an otherwise
unknown Qing-dynasty man named Li Hong 李紘, written to celebrate
the restoration of a Fuliang temple called Baoji 寶積.45 Li Hong includes a
much earlier story in his celebratory record: after a Song-dynasty monk
named Liaoyuan了元 had founded this temple, a Three Worthies (san xian
三賢) shrine was established in 1384 to worship the memory of this monk,
together with Su Shi 蘇軾 (1036-1101) and Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅
(1045-1105). Li Hong briefly explains why this Buddhist monk was wor-
shipped together with these two Confucian cultural heroes: the reputation
of Liaoyuan’s Confucian learning, acquired before he turned to Buddhism,
had reached the ears of Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, and therefore justified
45)
The inscription was included, probably in abbreviated form, in Xie Min, Jiangxi tongzhi:
124.34a.
the inclusion of Liaoyuan. The role of the Buddhist monk, Liaoyuan, is

papered over in this inscription by referring to his youthful engagement
with Confucianism: “Despite his becoming a monk, what he had mastered
of the rushu, the ‘Confucian arts,’ was not wasted” (suo tong yu rushu zhe
bu fei 所通於儒術者不廢).46 The rushu are what survives: preserved in the
rock in which the text by Li Hong was carved, and in the later versions
included in literary collections and local gazetteers, just as the view that
such texts create of the locality in which Jingdezhen was situated represent
the literati view.
But literati also wrote more private texts for inclusion in literary collec-
tions, and on occasion, these expressed their appreciation of ceramics. Of
course many liked porcelain for the pleasure they associated with drinking
wine:
Into my porcelain cup, my servant pours my wine until it fills my feet, drowns my
knees, gathers around my waist and calms my heart until I can drink no more. If I
have more, it pours out, dripping out making a splashing sound, soaking my clothes
and shoes. The servant stands by and secretly smiles, making the host and his guest
change color.47
It is clear that the author of the poem, the fifteenth-century Hanlin com-
piler Liu Dingzhi 劉定之 (1409-1469), enjoyed his cup, but it was rather
for what it could hold than for the material it was made of.
In another poem, a contrast is drawn between the beauty of ceramic
wares and the crudity of their environment. Even a place not good enough
to serve tea to visiting customers still had a piece of white porcelain (qing
ci 青瓷):
By the side of the road, three or four families run a rural inn.
It is clean and bright, but there is no broth let alone tea.
These are laborers and farmers, not connoisseurs.
Yet there is a porcelain vase with a sprig of purple bindweed.48
46)
Xie Min, Jiangxi tongzhi: 124.34a.
47)
Liu Dingzhi, “In praise of my new cup” 評新盃贊. In Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲, comp.,
Ming Wenhai 明文海 (ca. 1690s; SKQS edition): 123.10a-b.
48)
Wu Zhizhen 吳之振 et al., comp., Song shi chao 宋詩鈔 (seventeenth century; SKQS
edition): 78.12a.
The author of this poem, like Hong Yanzu, appreciated the beauty of the
vase with the sprig of rural flowers, but the setting in which he noticed it
suggests the ubiquity of such wares rather than their exceptionality.
In this sense, Hong Yanzu, whose poems opened this essay, is unusual.
His poetry touched both on the exceptional beauty of the individual piece
of ceramics he had bought, and on his experience of the locality in which
he served for a short time as headmaster of Changxiang Academy.49 Sig-
nificantly, however, these observations appeared in separate poems, and
Hong Yanzu establishes no connection between the two in his writings.
For an official such as Hong Yanzu, his writings emerged from two entirely
separate realms of representation: the public performance of his role as a
civil servant, and his private pleasure in collecting ceramics. The poems
were written as part of his public performance in order to construct the
identity of a loyal minister who suffered from a lack of recognition by a
worthy ruler. The mud of Jingdezhen’s waterways and the dust on its roads
formed a suitable backdrop for this performance, and Hong Yanzu was not
alone in using this convention. Academies such as Changxiang had emerged
as intellectual centers during the Southern Song dynasty, and thrived as
important nodes in the transmission of new approaches to ru 儒 learning
(or “learning of the Way,” daoxue 道學) during the Yuan dynasty.50 They
also provided a lifeline for Confucian scholars who were unable to proceed
to civil service posts while the examination system was suspended and only
a minority of those civil service posts was available to Southerners.51 Men
49)
Changxiang Academy had been founded in 1197 by a certain Li Qiyu 李齊愈, when he
served as Supervisor-General in Jingdezhen. In 1296 and in 1325 the buildings underwent
restoration, led by high officials such as the Jiangdong Pacification Commissioner (xuan-
weishi 宣慰使) and the Route Commander (zongguan 總管). Throughout the Yuan, the
academy was in ongoing and active use. For the fullest record of this academy, see Qiao Gui
喬溎, He Xiling 賀熙齡, and You Jisheng 游際盛, comp., Daoguang Fuliang xianzhi 道光
浮梁縣志 (1832; repr. Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1996): 6.61a-63a. The academy is
also discussed in Xie Min, Jiangxi tongzhi: 82.23a.
50)
On the role of academies during the Song and Yuan dynasties, see Linda Walton, “The
Institutional Context of Neo-Confucianism: Scholars, Schools, and Shu-yüan in Sung-
Yüan China.” In Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage, eds Wm. Theodore de
Bary and John Chaffee (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989): 457-92.
51)
The examinations were reopened in 1315, but those for Southerners (nanren 南人),
members of the Han population who lived in the conquered South, were harder than those
for Mongols, Central and Western Asians, and the residents of the northern territories that
had been part of the Jin dynasty. See Paul J. Smith, “Fear of Gynarchy in an Age of Chaos:
Kong Qi’s Reflections on Life in South China Under Mongol Rule.” Journal of the Economic
such as Headmaster Chen 陳山長, born during the waning years of the
Southern Song, embarked on their studies hoping to serve in government,
but were unable to fulfill their dreams when the Mongols invaded. Chen
“did not care for producing material wealth,” so it fell to his wife to provide
for the family, and until her old age “she never grew tired of being hungry
or cold.”52 Obviously, serving at Changxiang Academy provided Mr. Chen
with more status than material support, and the image of Chen’s long-
suffering wife only served to underscore Chen’s own hardship. The image
of the academy that is conjured up in these texts, however, is of an elite
institution that might have been located anywhere in southern China dur-
ing the Yuan dynasty. None of the people who were associated with the
academy ever referred to its proximity to the ongoing work of hundreds,
perhaps thousands of potters who produced wares for global markets.
Literature of Connoisseurship
But not all administrators and scholars, or at least not all of the time,
viewed the area through the spectacles of the learned and the officials;
some of them were private collectors and connoisseurs of fine ceramics.
The textual record of their activities, however, usually did not find a place
in literary collections but formed a genre in itself: the literature of connois-
seurship. Such texts, consisting of detailed listings of objects, provided
descriptions of their appearance and judgments of their cultural and some-
times monetary value, and offer invaluable insights into the social worlds
in which these objects existed. This genre flourished especially during the
culturally vibrant and socially fluid late Ming dynasty, when “not just the
things possessed but the manner of possessing them” served as significant
markers of elite status.53 By means of these texts a vista on the world of
and Social History of the Orient 41,1 (1998): 5. Local positions such as headmaster or
instructor, and clerical positions, were the most likely career opportunities for the southern
elites. See Smith, “Fear of Gynarchy”: 7.
52)
Wu Cheng 吳澄 (1249-1333), “Grave inscription for the late Mme. Jiang, wife
of Academy Headmaster Chen” 故陳山長妻姜氏墓銘. In Wu Wenzheng ji 吳文正集
(ca. 1333; SKQS edition): 82.3b-4b.
53)
Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern
China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004 [1991]): xiv. Clunas’s now classic book
is the most accessible study of this literature of connoisseurship. For a discussion of the
issue of material culture from a comparative perspective, see Craig Clunas, “Review Essay—
Modernity Global and Local: Consumption and the Rise of the West.” American Historical
Review 14,5 (1999): 1497-511.
ceramics in Jingdezhen opens up, which is quite different from the view
afforded by maps and literary collections.
One of the oldest texts of connoisseurial literature dealing with ceramics
is undoubtedly Jiang Qi’s 蔣祈 Ceramic Memoir (Tao ji 陶記), written dur-
ing the Song dynasty.54 There is no extant copy of the original text, but it
was included in the 1682 Fuliang gazetteer under the heading “Management
of Ceramics” (taozheng 陶政). It is only a short text (just over 1,000
characters in total), and there are no subdivisions. It begins with an oft-
quoted statement: “In the past, there were more than 300 kilns in Jingde-
zhen. The ceramic wares are a pure white and without blemish. In previous
times, when they were sold in different places, merchants referred to them
as ‘jades’ from Rao.”55 Immediately, several interesting observations pres-
ent themselves, starting with the figure of 300 in the first sentence. It may
be a hyperbole, of course, but it is a striking number nonetheless, suggest-
ing a sense of vibrancy in this center of manufacture that was widely rec-
ognized. Secondly, the purity of their whiteness and their blemish-free
appearance is of course well-known from the superior Song wares extant
today, and confirms what we already know about Song aesthetics: purity
and simplicity of form and color were far more appreciated during the
Song than they would be in later times. Thirdly, there was a healthy trade
in Jingdezhen ceramics beyond the locality, although the author does not
specify anything beyond “other places” (ta suo 他所). Finally, the nomen-
clature is also interesting, as there is a reference to “Raozhou jades” (Rao yu
饒玉). Green-glazed ceramics were sometimes defined as jades or imitation
jades ( jia yu qi 假玉器), but as these were white wares, the term “Raozhou
jades” most likely refers to their jade-like quality.56
54)
An annotated version of this text can be found in Bai Kun: 白焜, “Song Jiang Qi Tao ji
jiaozhu” 宋蒋祈陶記校注. Jingdezhen taoci, special issue (1981): 36-51. For a translation
into modern Chinese, see Yan Shilin 顏石麟, “Song Jiang Qi Tao ji xiandai Hanyu yiwen”
宋蔣祈陶記現代漢語譯文. Jingdezhen taoci, special issue (1981): 53-5. I have used the
edition included in the 1832 edition of the Fuliang gazetteer. The dating of this source has
led to extensive discussions: it was reputedly included in a no longer extant Yuan-dynasty
(1322) edition of the Fuliang gazetteer (Fuliang zhou zhi 浮梁州志), but some scholars
assume that Jiang Qi wrote his text during the Southern Song, sometime between 1214
and 1234. See Kerr and Wood, Ceramic Technology: 24. A translation of the text appears in
Tichane, Ching-te-chen: 43-8.
55)
Jiang Qi, Tao ji. In Qiao Gui, Daoguang Fuliang xianzhi: 8.25a.
56)
The section “Management of Ceramics” states: “In 621, Tao Yu 陶玉 offered wares
of imitation jade to the court” (Tang Wude sinian Tao Yu xian jia yu qi 唐武德四年陶玉獻
假玉器). See Zeng Guofan 曾國藩, Liu Kunyi 劉坤一 et al., comp., [Guangxu] Jiangxi
The next sentence turns to comparisons with other kilns: “In appear-
ance, they are even more marvelous than the red wares from Ding 定 and
the emerald green (qingmi 青秘) wares from Longquan 龍泉.”57 The kilns
at Ding and Longquan produced some of the most highly sought-after
ceramics of the Song dynasty. Ding kilns were located in Hebei 河北 in the
north, and produced molded wares with an ivory white glaze. Longquan
kilns, located in the more southern province of Zhejiang, produced green
wares, more commonly known in Western texts as celadon wares. The
comparison between Jingdezhen wares and those from Ding and Longquan
kilns suggests a certain level of competition between the products from
these areas. The statement only makes sense in the context of a rather
sophisticated market, with powerful consumers formulating highly precise
and differentiated demands, communicating those demands to the pro-
ducers at kilns hundreds of miles further away. As Jiang Qi notes: “To the
east and west of the river Xi 淅, the ceramics they prefer are yellow and
black, which are made at the kilns of Hutian 湖田. In Jiang[nan], Hu[nan
bei], [Si]chuan and Guang[dong nan], they prefer bluish-white [qingbai]
wares, which are made in the potteries of the town [i.e., Jingdezhen].”58
The text goes on to discuss further specifics of the market for ceramics,
detailing the specific elements of taste associated with different regions: “If
you wish to make a profit, then wares must be selected to suit each area” (li
bi di you ze yan 利必地有擇焉).59 The text even suggests a dumping ground
for inferior pieces: those that were rejected by consumers in Jiangxi,
Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang could still find buyers in Jiangsu and
Anhui. “The local sellers refer to these wares as ‘yellow rejects’ [huang diao
黃掉]. The term refers to the unpleasant color of their glazes, and they can
be discarded.”60 Obviously, without the excellent trade networks and sys-
tems of communication that we know were in existence during the Southern
Song and Yuan dynasties, such careful market differentiations could not
have been possible, and this text seeks to equip its readers with specific
knowledge to enter this market. The textual record therefore does not only
provide insight into the wares themselves and the values attached to them,
but also offers information on the economics of the trade in ceramics
tongzhi [光緖]江西通志 (1881; XXSK edition): 93.5b. See also Kerr and Wood, Ceramic
Technology: 524.
57)
58)
Jiang Qi, Tao ji. In Qiao Gui, Daoguang Fuliang xianzhi: 8.25b.
59)
Jiang Qi, Tao ji. In Qiao Gui, Daoguang Fuliang xianzhi: 8.25b.
60)
within the realm. The text assigns value and meaning to the different wares
in economic terms, including even such details as the level of bribes
required and the cost of infringements of the extensive regulations.
Many other texts appeared over the centuries that followed Jiang Qi’s
example, detailing varied aspects of the ceramics trade. More specifically,
however, the genre opened up to include more detailed descriptions of the
value of the different wares. The most famous example is undoubtedly
Essential Criteria of Antiques (Gegu yaolun 格古要論), of 1388, an influen-
tial fourteenth-century manual concerning the appreciation of arts and
antiques written by Cao Zhao曹昭.61 Here one reads that wares from
Raozhou in the old style (gu Rao qi 古饒器) had bodies that were “thin and
glossy” (bo er run 薄而潤), that the best ones were plain (su 素), that the
glossy white wares were of the highest value, but that overall their value
was not as great as that of the Ding wares. In Cao Zhao’s eyes, the wares
produced in Jingdezhen, including the so-called “shufu wares” (shufu
樞府), were not uniformly praiseworthy:
These wares had small bases with imprinted patterns. The bowls with the characters
shu 樞 and fu 府 written on the inside were of the highest value. More recently pro-
duced wares with wider bases in plain style are next in value. There are also wares that
have been decorated with a blue pattern under the glaze and some in five colors. Those
with patterns are of the utmost vulgarity.62
Clearly, at the time of Cao Zhao’s writing Jingdezhen had not yet achieved
the height of status it would attain during the latter part of the Ming.
Shufu wares, traditionally seen as forming the transition between the plain
white wares (qing ci) of the late Song and the blue-and-whites (qing hua)
of the Yuan and Ming, were only barely tolerated in the rigorous apprecia-
tion scheme Cao Zhao proposed, and blue-and-whites were dismissed as
gaudy and unsophisticated. That would all change, of course, and blue-
and-whites became perhaps the most sought after wares ever produced in
the world history of porcelain.63 What the text does, however, as Craig
61)
The text has been subjected to rigorous study and was translated in full by the famous
ceramics specialist Sir Percival David. See Sir Percival David, Chinese Connoisseurship: The
Ko Ku Yao Lun (London: Faber & Faber, 1971). See also Clunas, Superfluous Things: 11-3.
62)
Cao Zhao 曹昭, Gegu yaolun 格古要論 (1388; SKQS edition): 3.3b-4a.
63)
The literature on blue-and-white porcelains is too vast to detail here. A good starting
point is John Carswell, Blue & White: Chinese Porcelain around the World (London: The
British Museum Press, 2000).
Clunas has pointed out, is to provide the reader with specialist knowledge
in order to turn traded commodities into valuable possessions imbued
with cultural status, and wealthy merchants into gentlemen, “transforming
economic power into cultural power.”64 If Jiang Qi’s Ceramic Memoir could
help a merchant in Jingdezhen to make a profit, Cao Zhao’s Essential Cri-
teria of Antiques could help that same merchant to gain status.
Local Gazetteers: Official Geography and Local Identity

Although the genres discussed so far all included textual records of a some-
what varied nature, local gazetteers (difangzhi 地方志) are perhaps the
most inclusive of the genres treated in this study.65 They were generally
compiled (or previous editions were overhauled and updated) under the
auspices of the local magistrate, who in turn relied heavily on other local
officials and members of the local elite. Gazetteers include texts of many
different types, all providing information on the locality, such as descrip-
tions of the geography and economy of the region, accounts of customs
and local practices, listings of temples and schools, biographies of local
residents, and writings produced both by dignitaries visiting the area and
by natives who had made a name for themselves elsewhere. Thousands of
gazetteers from before 1949 are still extant today, the vast majority of these
dating from the late Ming and Qing dynasties.66 The genre already existed
during the Han-Tang period, and developed during the Song into a widely
circulated text-type that purported to give a full account of the local condi-
tions of a specific territorial unit.67
Gazetteers, particularly in the ubiquitous form they took on during the
Ming and Qing dynasties, were in many ways organs of the state: they
were representations of space and place which were usually compiled by
64)
Clunas, Superfluous Things: 13.
65)
A general introduction to the genre is provided in Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese His-
tory: A Manual (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998): 153-61. Char-
acteristics of the genre are also discussed in Harriet T. Zurndorfer, China Bibliography: A
Research Guide to Reference Works about China Past and Present (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995):
187-95. See also Sue Takashi’s essay in this issue.
66)
See Peter K. Bol, “The Rise of Local History: History, Geography, and Culture in South-
ern Song and Yuan Wuzhou.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 61,1 (2001): 37.
67)
These developments have been detailed in James M. Hargett, “Song Dynasty Local
Gazetteers and Their Place in the History of Difangzhi Writing.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies 56,2 (1996): 405-42.
representatives of the central government. The intended audience included

local elites and dignitaries, who often supported the enterprise financially,
as well as officials at the capital who might judge the performance of local
magistrates on the basis of the gazetteers produced under their auspices.
The ways in which the compilers and editors embedded information about
the locality in the gazetteers, highlighting the area’s strongest features and
glossing over perceived weaknesses and potential problems, can reveal
many aspects about places that are not readily available elsewhere. The
most explicit location for this process of embedding information is per-
haps the collection of texts included at the beginning of a gazetteer. Here,
the compiler would include not only his own preface and those of his
immediate collaborators, but also the prefaces included in earlier editions
of the gazetteer.
The earliest extant gazetteer for Fuliang is the 1682 Fuliang County Gaz-
etteer (Fuliang xianzhi 浮梁縣志), edited by a magistrate named Wang
Linyuan 王臨元. Wang asked his superior, the prefect of Raozhou, Huang
Jialin 黃家遴, to contribute a preface for this edition. Huang duly obliged,
and wrote the following:
The mountains and rivers are very beautiful, local produce is abundant, and through
time there have been many famous ministers and wise scholars. The soil can be poor
and local customs unhealthy [tu xia su yu 土狹俗窳], and when the people did not
have the means to provide for themselves, they molded the soil into vessels for eating
and drinking to provide for themselves. The ceramic wares of Yuzhang 豫章 hence-
forth quickly spread through the realm. Annually, quotas are set for the tribute to the
Directorate for Imperial Manufactories [shangfang 尚方]. At regular times when they
have completed manufactures, the emperor’s personal servants come to supervise [te
qian jin chen li zhi 特遣近臣蒞之]. Thus, one county provides everything. One feels
that the Chief Minister of the Court of Imperial Entertainments [tai guan 太官] gen-
erates profit for the realm, so that locally the benefits also increase. Yet disadvantages
can also grow numerous, as [the success of this tributary manufacture] depends on a
sufficient supply of foodstuffs and on the quality of the governance. How could we not
take this seriously? Hence the detail of the present records and the care we have taken
over this compilation. This is even more significant when we compare the region to
other areas.68
Huang Jialin, “Preface to the Fuliang county gazetteer” 浮梁縣志序. In Wang Linyuan
68)
王臨元, comp., Fuliang xianzhi 浮梁縣志 (1682; repr. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 1992):
shou.2a-3a.
This account provides an interesting glimpse into wider perceptions of

what happened in Jingdezhen. Immediately after a sentence that provides
little more than platitudes about the area’s natural beauty and human tal-
ents, Huang highlights the negative aspects of this area: its soil quality and
the standards of local customs. The creation of ceramics is thus presented
as a coping mechanism and as a way for the locals to survive. Huang is
willing to recognize the spread of ceramics through the realm, but wastes
no words on the technological achievements these ceramics represented or
the aesthetics for which they were widely known. In his description of the
court control over manufactures, Huang again stresses the negative: the
demands for tribute can only be met when there are adequate supplies of
food and good local managers. Huang thus clarifies why he has dwelt on
these aspects: he hopes that the detailed records in this gazetteer will serve
as a guide, so that local officials will be able to make better local arrange-
ments. In the preface to a gazetteer, this emphasis makes sense as it lends
weight to the entire enterprise of making such a compilation. Compared
with texts specifically about the ceramics industry that tend to dwell on its
strengths, this preface affords insight into the priorities of a magistrate.
A man named Chen Yu 陳淯, magistrate in Fuliang county for five
months in 1682, also contributed a preface to this edition of the gazetteer,
beginning with a reflection on the broad significance of the wealth of local
detail usually included in such local histories.69 He continues by offering a
closer description of the area he served in:
This region [i.e., Raozhou] has seven constituent counties. Fu is set amongst myriad
mountains. It covers an area of one hundred li, and upon investigation, we find the
people gentle and kind, and rituals and teachings flourishing. There is one town,
Jingde, a large urban area [da du hui 大都會] in the south of the county. As for its line
of business [ ye 業], this is where the potters and the ceramics traders are. Within the
seas [hai nei 海内] we have the use [ yong 用] of these ceramics and amass the profits
[li 利] generated through ceramics. Boats and carts crowd together here, merchants
and traders rush about, people from the five directions [wufang 五方] intermingle, all
spreading out their wares, so numerous, it is truly magnificent! Therefore we have
described this place so fully, and all observations were made crystal clear.70
69)
Chen Yu is listed among the magistrates in the supplementary ninth fascicle, added to
the 1682 edition of the Fuliang gazetteer. See Wang Linyuan, Fuliang xianzhi: 9.15b.
70)
Chen Yu, “Preface to the reprint of the Fuliang gazetteer” 重刊浮梁縣志序 in Wang
Linyuan, Fuliang xianzhi: shou.2b-3b.
Chen Yu’s assessment highlights quite explicitly the mercantile aspects of

the town of Jingdezhen, referring to the presence of the merchants and
their wares, their boats and their vehicles. His language is rather func-
tional, emphasizing the “use” and the “profits” generated by this business,
but there is nevertheless an interesting geographical dimension to his lan-
guage. The benefits generated by this industry are enjoyed “within the
seas,” while the merchants come from the “five directions.” “Within the
seas” is a term used as early as the Mencius (Mengzi 孟子) to refer to
the territories of the Chinese realm, while “the five directions” explicitly
denotes the world beyond that. The Record of Ritual (Liji 禮記) already
refers to the people of the five directions as those who cannot understand
each other’s language and whose desires are different.71 The commentary
by Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574-648) further explains that “the people of the
five directions” refers to the Central Kingdom (zhong guo 中國) as well as
to the four non-Chinese tribes (si yi 四夷).72 Here, finally, we see a bit of
the global context within which Jingdezhen was situated. Although it is
little more than a glimpse, it is a glimpse nonetheless, and Chen Yu explic-
itly acknowledges the presence of non-Chinese traders in Jingdezhen, con-
trasting their presence for the purposes of trade with the profits that are
enjoyed within the realm.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, when thousands of
gazetteers were being edited throughout the empire, compilers took their
task extremely seriously, often seeking out older texts that had not been
included previously. One of the most extensive documents on the ceramics
industry was first included in the 1832 gazetteer of Fuliang county.73 This
gazetteer was compiled by a man named Qiao Gui 喬溎, who served as
magistrate of Fuliang at the time. Qiao Gui, whose highest degree was
tributary student (貢生 gongsheng), yielded the position of overall editor
《禮記·王制》:“五方之民, 言語不通, 嗜欲不同.”

71)
72)
The text reads: wu fang zhi min zhe, wei zhong guo yu si yi ye 五方之民者, 謂中國與四
夷也.
73)
Qiao Gui, Daoguang Fuliang xianzhi: 8.6b-45b. To a large extent, the compilers have
drawn on Wang Zongmu 王宗沐 and Lu Wangai 陸萬垓, comp., Wanli Jiangxi sheng da
zhi 萬曆江西省大志 (1597; repr. Beijing: Xianzhuang shuju, 2003). The section “Manage-
ment of Ceramics” includes discussions of the imperial kilns, information about clays and
cobalt, the number of required workers, and the demands for imperial tribute that had to
be fulfilled. The second part of fascicle 8 serves as an anthology, and includes texts such as
Jiang Qi’s Tao ji and a number of important eighteenth-century texts by Tang Ying 唐英
(1682-1756).
(zongxiu 總修) to a Hunan man, the jinshi degree holder, Hanlin academi-
cian, and editor at the National History office He Xiling 賀熙齡 (1788-
1864), who was a younger brother of the more famous He Changling 賀
長齡 (1785-1848).74 He’s preface begins with a discussion of the nature of
local gazetteers, highlighting the connection between the ordering of space
and the ordering of local knowledge. As kings create systems and
measurements for state management (lit. “build the structures and measure
the fields,” ti guo jing ye 體國經野), towns can be settled, and the passes,
bridges, and dams that surround the towns can be ordered. Similarly, it is
crucial to apply principles for the selection of the institutions, laws, and
seminal texts that need to be preserved. One can only understand a place
fully, he claims, when one has a complete overview of the rise and decline
of local customs and human talents. This expansive, but perhaps rather
generic introduction, leads him to a more precise description of the area:
Fuliang is located in the upper regions of Rao. It is an extensive area with fertile soil.
Its conditions are excellent and the atmosphere [qi 氣] is pure. Jingde is one of its
outstanding places. The benefits of the ceramic vessels produced in this town reach
everywhere in the realm. The amassed workers and traders frequently number in the
hundred thousands. Therefore Fuliang is known as a greatly respected place [wang yi
望邑].75
He Xiling attributes the greatness of the area as a whole and its reputation
in the realm largely to the extraordinary nature of the ceramics industry,
singling out only this aspect of the local culture.
In a rather more literary preface to the same gazetteer, the preceptor of
the county school, a man named You Jisheng 游際盛, describes the process
by which this edition of the gazetteer came into existence over a period of
ten years:
The hooves of horses and oars of boats have frequently traversed the landscape. Keen
observers of similarities and differences have explored local customs and habits. Record
keepers and compilers have investigated the numbers of the male able-bodied popula-
tion. Worshippers have made their offerings to the area’s ancient sages and wise men.
74)
He Changling studied at the Yuelu Academy in Hunan, and was the author of an influ-
ential statecraft anthology. See He Changling 賀長齡, Huangchao jingshi wenbian 皇朝經
世文編 (1827; repr. Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1964). For details on He Changling’s political
influence see, for example, James M. Polachek, The Inner Opium War (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1992).
75)
Qiao Gui, Daoguang Fuliang xianzhi: shou.1a.
Heroes of the examinations have become intimately familiar with the area’s outstand-
ing talents and great scholars. Poets and writers have preserved its verses and poems.
Ceramics officials have widely investigated the famous ceramics of the area. Past events
and present matters provide the details of the area’s florescence and decline, as do its
ruins and famous sights, its Buddhist shrines and Daoist temples, endless sources of
nostalgia. Thus carefree days and nights were traversed with delight.76
You Jisheng paints a rather romantic picture of the gazetteer’s compilation

process, with each specific aspect of the locality being investigated by
knowledgeable and dedicated specialists. Just as local talent was assessed by
examination graduates, and literary texts by poets and writers, local ceramics
were investigated by those he judged to know most about it: the ceramics
officials. You Jisheng uses the phrase yanzhi guange 埏埴官哥 (“elder
brother official of ceramics”), presumably to refer in this somewhat inti-
mate fashion to the elder official Liu Fang 劉芳, who was listed among the
editors of the gazetteer and has been identified as the Jingdezhen inspector
(xunjian 巡檢).
Clearly, ceramics were important for Fuliang county since it was repre-
sented in the gazetteers of the area, but ceramics could only be mentioned
after the information about the population and local worthies, examina-
tion success, and local writings. As geographies of space, these texts map
Jingdezhen as a unit within the administrative structure, and as such, the
textual geography largely determines the landscape of ceramics that
emerges.
Merchant Manuals
The images of Jingdezhen conjured up in the sources discussed thus far
have gradually revealed a fuller picture of the ceramics industry in its vari-
ous social contexts. The textual geographies that produced these images
situated Jingdezhen on the whole within a Confucian discourse and
assigned literati a central role within this space, while delegating commer-
cial activities to a lesser domain. One final genre, that of merchant manu-
als, will help to detail Jingdezhen as it would have appeared in the eyes of
the merchants who visited the area for the purpose of trade. These were
texts that served the needs of merchants: they described in detail the routes
traveled by those in search of goods and markets. Many of the routes served
76)
You Jisheng, “Preface.” In Qiao Gui, Daoguang Fuliang xianzhi: shou.5a.
the capital, and provided connections between the capital and the centers
of administration in the provinces and prefectural capitals of the realm,
but they also included townships such as Jingdezhen which constituted
crucial nodes in this mercantile network. Rather than fit Jingdezhen into
the imaginary and ill-suited grid of local administration, these manuals
reveal Jingdezhen’s centrality in mercantile activity.
The merchants who were the most active in Jingdezhen largely came
from the counties just across the Ming provincial boundaries separating
Raozhou in Jiangxi from Huizhou in Anhui. That the Huizhou merchants
were among the most active merchants in the realm, especially from the
sixteenth century onward, has been amply demonstrated in the scholarly
literature and requires no further elaboration here.77 Among the goods the
Huizhou merchants traded were locally grown tea, wood from the origi-
nally densely forested mountains, wood-products (such as ink, lacquer,
and paper, and later printed materials), and numerous other locally crafted
objects.78 During the Ming dynasty, as the economy expanded, the num-
ber of Huizhou merchants grew rapidly, and throughout the Ming and
Qing dynasties everywhere in the realm communities of Huizhou mer-
chants accumulated large profits through the process of buying and sell-
ing.79 Although salt had been the mainstay of their trade, ceramics were by
no means at the bottom of their list of profitable goods.80
The proximity of Huizhou to Jingdezhen and the convenience of access
routes that connected these two places form part of the explanation of the
77)
See Michael Dillon, “Transport and Marketing in the Development of the Jingdezhen
Porcelain Industry During the Ming and Qing Dynasties.” Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient 35,3 (1992): 278-90; Du Yongtao, “Locality, Identity, and
Geography: Translocal Practices of Huizhou Merchants in Late Imperial China” (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006); Antonia Finnane, Speak-
ing of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia
Center, 2004): 57-68; Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in
Ming China (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999): 126 et seq.; Harriet T. Zurn-
dorfer, Change and Continuity in Chinese Local History: The Development of Hui-Chou Pre-
fecture, 800 to 1800 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989).
78)
See Zurndorfer, Change and Continuity: 25-7, 41, 124-5. On the role of the Huizhou
merchants in book making and book collecting, see Joseph P. McDermott, A Social History
of the Chinese Book: Books and Literati Culture in Late Imperial China (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2006).
79)
Zurndorfer, Change and Continuity: 64.
80)
Dillon, “Transport and Marketing”: 285-6; Du Yongtao, “Locality, Identity and
Geography.”
Huizhou merchants’ interest in porcelain. Huizhou merchants had access

to a wide network of land and water routes connecting Huizhou to centers
of administrative and economic importance, including Nanjing, Yang-
zhou, Huguang, and Chang’an.81 Although other places such as Hankou
on the Yangzi, Suzhou on the Grand Canal, Foshan on the Pearl River, and
Shanghai on the coast may have been better positioned for late-imperial
interregional trade, as Antonia Finnane has pointed out, during the Ming
access to Jingdezhen was easy enough as late Ming merchant manuals
demonstrate.82 The route from Huizhou to Jingdezhen is described, for
example, in the Ming-dynasty Encyclopedia for Gentry and Merchants (Shi
shang lei yao 士商類要), compiled by Cheng Chunyu 程春宇.83 The route
began overland: it ran via a number of post stations ( yi zhan 驛站) and
half-way stops or inns ( pu 舖), each located at a distance of about 10 li, to
reach Xiuning 休寧 county.84 There, the traveler crossed the river at Lan
Crossing 藍渡, passed the foot of Qiyun Cliff 齊雲巌, and continued via a
number of stopping places to Qimen county. Here he boarded a boat to
travel downriver on the Chang. The route describes a number of the land-
marks along the river, including a small lake and several rapids, after which
one reached Fuliang county. From there, it was only another 30 li to Jing-
dezhen. The Encyclopedia extends the route to Raozhou, with an aside for
81)
Merchants’ Routes at a Glance (Shangcheng yilan 商程一覽) lists these as routes 81 to 84.
See Zurndorfer, Change and Continuity: 18.
82)
See Finnane, Speaking of Yangzhou: 57-8. Brook also provides descriptions of the river
connections available to the Huizhou merchants. See Brook, Confusions of Pleasure: 126.
83)
This is the third route listed in Encyclopedia for Gentry and Merchants. See Yang Zheng-
tai 楊正泰, Huang Bian 黃汴, and Cheng Chunyu 程春宇, Mingdai yizhan kao 明代驛站考
(Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2006): 312. The reprint of the Encyclopedia for Gentry
and Merchants in the third appendix of Yang Zhengtai’s Mingdai yizhan kao is the most
convenient edition of this text. Du Yongtao has discussed manuals and encyclopedias of
this kind in some detail. See especially Du Yongtao, “Locality, Identity”: 184-9.
84)
The term yizhan is usually translated as “post station.” The best study of the national
stage network is Yang Zhengtai, Mingdai yizhan kao. The term pu, translated as “halfway
stops,” is discussed in Liu-hung Huang and Chu Djang, A Complete Book Concerning Hap-
piness and Benevolence: A Manual for Local Magistrates in Seventeenth-Century China (Tuc-
son: University of Arizona Press, 1984). The author of the seventeenth-century manual,
which was translated by Huang and Djang, encourages the audience to consider the plight
of the horses, for whom the regular distance of between 80 and 100 li (40 to 50 kilometers)
was often too much. “Halfway stops between post stations, where people on mission can
change horses, will reduce the deaths from exhaustion and the need for replacement.”
Huang, Complete Book: 586. Such halfway stops could be located in private dwellings or
other buildings, including, presumably, shops or inns.
those wishing to travel onward to Nanchang, and through the prefectures

of Nankang 南康, Jiujiang 九江, and Huangzhou 黃州 to the Wudang
Mountains 武當山 in Hubei 湖北.85 The river makes this an easy and obvi-
ous route, one that probably changed little over the centuries of ceramic
production in Jingdezhen.
A number of other merchant manuals from the late Ming describe the
same set of routes, such as Cartloads of Selected Brocades (Wuche bajin 五車
拔錦).86 Of its 43 routes, the majority radiate from the capitals (Beijing
and Nanjing) to the hinterland, and from the provincial capitals to their
constituent prefectures. The order in which the routes are listed indicates
their importance: the first one is the route from Beijing to Nanjing and
onward to Fujian, the second details the main north-south arterial route
from Beijing to Guangdong, with Jiangxi as a crucial stop-over point.87
The final ten routes describe other frequently used transport links, such as
the route from Nanjing to Beijing along the imperial canal, routes up and
down the Yangzi, two routes from Nanchang to important Jiangxi prefec-
tures (Raozhou and Ruizhou), and the Huizhou route to Chong’an 崇安
county in Fujian.88 Huizhou merchants could and did travel easily to
nearby markets and transported the goods they found there into a number
of directions.
The river route served more purposes than just the needs of merchants.
Over time, the clay deposits in the immediate vicinity of the kilns were
exhausted, and resources further afield had to be exploited. During the
Yuan and Ming dynasties, clay for potting was brought in from Wuyuan in
southwest Huizhou, and lumber for fuel came from Qimen.89 Clay was
usually brought by land routes, especially as there was no direct water con-
nection between Wuyuan and Jingdezhen. Almost all the fuel was brought
into the town by river. Sometimes pine trees were chopped into pieces at
the spot and conveyed to the kilns by boat, sometimes tree trunks were left
85)
Shi shang lei yao, in Yang Zhengtai, Mingdai yizhan kao: 312-3.
86)
The easiest edition to use is the Japanese reprint of the 1597 edition held in the
Tobunken, entitled Gosha bakkin. See Sakai Tadao 酒井忠夫, Sakade Yoshinobu 坂出祥伸,
and Ogawa Yōichi 小川陽一, eds, Gosha bakkin 五車拔錦 (1597; repr. Tokyo: Kyūko
shoin, 1999).
87)
See Sakai, Gosha bakkin: 2.68.
88)
See Sakai, Gosha bakkin: 2.137-41.
89)
For a description of the different places of origin of the clays used in the kilns, see Wang
Zongmu, Wanli Jiangxi sheng da zhi: 7.4b, 7.6a. For a reference to lumber coming from
Qimen, see Dillon, “Transport and Marketing”: 283.
almost whole to be floated or dragged down river.90 Depending on the

needs of the potters, the level of moisture in these wood fuels could be
manipulated to create the right effect.91 Clearly, Jingdezhen depended
heavily on what Huizhou had to offer, yet this Huizhou-Jingdezhen con-
nection is usually hidden from view on maps by the thickly colored lines
of provincial boundaries. Finally, in this source we see Jingdezhen as it
must have looked in the eyes of both potters and merchants: a place closely
connected to other nearby centers of trade and to the crucial resources
needed for ongoing production.
Concluding Thoughts
The texts discussed here have revealed a variety of perceptions of Jingde-
zhen: as a site suspended in administrative space, as a backdrop for long-
suffering servants of an uncaring ruler, as a production site of vulgar wares
in gaudy colors, as a gathering point for merchants, and as a crucial node
in a mercantile network. Most striking throughout these texts, however, is
the almost complete absence of references to connections beyond the Chi-
nese realm. Despite the fact that the ceramic wares manufactured in Rao-
zhou were exported throughout the area and beyond, and despite the local
awareness of the presence of traders from beyond the four seas, as recorded
by early Qing magistrate Chen Yu, Jingdezhen appears as a locally embed-
ded rather than a globally connected place. Jingdezhen fell outside the
administrative structures that shaped status and hierarchy within the impe-
rial polity, and in cartographic and written representations its position
depended on the status of the places in its most immediate geographical
vicinity. For Jingde, that vicinity was formed by places such as Fuliang,
Raozhou, and Huizhou. Manufacture and trade did shape local identities,
but those identities remained located within the seas and did not cross
cultural boundaries. These places may well have been “global” in the sense
that their export of material culture connected them to a worldwide net-
work of economic relations. But those global connections hardly had an
impact on the representation of these places in local textual geographies,
perhaps not even on the ways in which inhabitants, visitors, and adminis-
trators understood them as places. We must therefore conclude that the
90)
Wang Zongmu, Wanli Jiangxi sheng da zhi: fascicle 7.
91)
Wang Zongmu, Wanli Jiangxi sheng da zhi: 7.24b-25a.
global past of ceramics manufacture remains too fragmented to allow for

its complete reconstruction.
Abbreviations
SKQS: Wenyuange Siku quanshu 文淵閣四庫全書. Taipei: Shangwu yin-
shu guan, 1983.
XXSK: Xuxiu Siku quanshu 續修四庫全書. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chu-
banshe, 1995.
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Fragments of A Global Past: Ceramics Manufacture in Song-Yuan-Ming Jingdezhen

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Journal of the Economic and

Social History of the Orient 52 (2009) 117-152 www.brill.nl/jesho

Fragments of a Global Past:

A single vessel completes my earlier purchases,

The abilities of carvers may be boundless,

the product of natural transformations rather than the outcome of invasive

The [art of ] pottery [taught by] Shun gave guidance to Kong,5

Wind and mist render the autumn even gloomier,

image of the town, marred by the pounding of water-powered hammers

The Ceramics Trade in a Global Perspective

material culture of Chinese design enjoyed a widespread popularity

porcelain] should be of some use in Europe.”21 “All that is concerned with

D’Entrecolles’s observations shed light on the ways in which the Chinese

During the Tianqi (1621-1627) and Chongzhen (1628-1644) reign peri-

Comte, like d’Entrecolles, discussed the process of manufacture and the

Maps and Administrative Boundaries

this representation, seems to exist only as an extension of the bureaucratic

Ceramics in the Literary Collections of Scholars and Oﬃcials

the inclusion of Liaoyuan. The role of the Buddhist monk, Liaoyuan, is

Local Gazetteers: Oﬃcial Geography and Local Identity

representatives of the central government. The intended audience included

This account provides an interesting glimpse into wider perceptions of

Chen Yu’s assessment highlights quite explicitly the mercantile aspects of

《禮記·王制》:“五方之民, 言語不通, 嗜欲不同.”

You Jisheng paints a rather romantic picture of the gazetteer’s compilation

Huizhou merchants’ interest in porcelain. Huizhou merchants had access

those wishing to travel onward to Nanchang, and through the prefectures

almost whole to be ﬂoated or dragged down river.90 Depending on the

global past of ceramics manufacture remains too fragmented to allow for

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