In the sixth year of the Apocalypse in Jingdezhen, the roar of the dragon kiln's collapse buried Lu Zhaoyun's father and shattered the porcelain-making foundation of three generations of the Lu family. My father died in the fire to save the last blue and white kiln, leaving only a charred corpse, one hundred and twenty broken porcelain pieces, and a huge debt of twenty-three taels.
Under the coercion of He Shengxing, what Lu Zhaoyun dug out of the ruins was not a complete porcelain that could pay off the debt, but a broken bowl covered with ice cracks - the glaze was blue and white, and the cracks were like a network. It was an ugly but stubborn accident caused by the destruction of the kiln fire and ashes.
When Suzhou scribe Ye Bingwen bought this "trash" for thirty taels of silver, Lu Zhaoyun suddenly understood: brokenness may not be the end. My father has spent his whole life firing flawless blue glazes, and the path he wants to take is to make those cracks that are considered flaws the bones of the porcelain.
He used inferior soil and miscellaneous firewood and tried repeatedly in an abandoned steamed bun kiln. The popular conspiracy, the doubts of the old kiln workers, and the suppression of traditional aesthetics failed to extinguish the fire in his kiln. He sought resilience from horsetail ashes and convergence from pearl powder, and finally tempered that thrilling accident into a controllable "Skynet Ice Crack Glaze" - with patterns like iron nets, sounds like gold and stone, cracking but not broken, and defeating but never falling apart.
When three works of heavenly craftsmanship amazed the elegant people in the south of the Yangtze River, and when "ice cracks" became an elegant topic of conversation on the Qinhuai River painting boat, Lu Zhaoyun stood in front of the rebuilt kiln and finally understood: the so-called desperate situation is just fate forcing you to burn a kiln fire that is different from the past and truly belongs to you.
