Introduction to the book "The Road to Porcelain"
This is a local epic in Ganpo that spans 146 years. It takes the life trajectories of four generations of the Yu family in Duchang as the main line, relies on the true history of the Jingdezhen porcelain industry, and depicts the wanderings and perseverance of Poyang Lake people who "went to town" to enter the porcelain capital from generation to generation. The story begins with the Poyang Lake flood in the late Qing Dynasty. Yu Songnian, the first-generation villager, was forced to go to Jingdezhen due to famine. He worked hard as an apprentice from the bottom to learn the unique skills of Zhuang, and witnessed the guild games and Dule weapons fights between the Du Gang, Hui Gang, and Za Gang. His son Yu Chengye was in charge of the firewood kiln during the war years, and actively participated in the public-private partnership amid the changing times. The third-generation craftsman Yu Jingtao took root in the state-owned porcelain factory, survived the heyday of the planned economy, and faced the wave of layoffs during the restructuring of the porcelain factory in the 1990s. Yu Po'an, a fourth-generation young man, gave up his opportunities for development in other places and returned to his hometown to rescue the handicraft skills that were on the verge of being lost. He witnessed the entire process of Jingdezhen's more than ten years of application for World Heritage. The book is intertwined with porcelain dealers, painters, people who wandered into foreign lands, and practitioners who speculated on antiques. It uses the rise and fall of the kiln fire to analyze the eternal game of immigrant nostalgia, craft inheritance, and commercial interests. It finally concludes with the successful application for World Heritage and expresses the main theme: the root of the kiln fire lies not in the mountains and rivers of the homeland, but in the craftsmanship that has been adhered to from generation to generation.
