Years of Ashes in Xun Tao

Years of Ash at Xun Tao

The Yangtze flows on, and the wind blows strong along the banks of Xun. In the early 1980s, Jiujiang's General Company of Architectural Ceramics took root on Jiurui Road in the western part of the city. A factory rose from barren ground, and its kilns were fired for the first time, ushering in the golden age of state-run ceramic manufacturing in northern Jiangxi. Machines roared day and night; ball mills filled the air with dust, and roller kilns blazed with heat. Thousands of industrial workers made their homes in the factory's red-brick compounds, building the industrial glory of a small city with their blood and sweat. Technician Lu Jinghuai spent half his life in the equipment workshop, while kiln worker Su Guiying bent over the scorching furnace. From then on, their family's fate was bound tightly to the factory's rise and fall.

The 1990s brought a wave of change, and the state-owned factory reached its peak. The company introduced a fully automated Italian production line for architectural ceramics and joined forces with Taiwan's Changxin Capital to form a Sino-foreign joint venture. It launched a large-scale vitrified tile project, becoming a model for investment attraction across the city and the focus of hopes for its industrial development. New machines stood in formation, production and sales flourished, and everyone believed that Xuncheng's ceramics industry could reach north and south and sail overseas.

The illusion of prosperity soon collapsed. Private ceramics manufacturers in Foshan rose abruptly, and the market bore down on the factory. The Chinese and foreign investors had conflicting ideas; imported glaze formulas were ill-suited to local conditions; massive loans for technical upgrades weighed heavily on the company; inventory piled up, and payments were hard to collect. The joint venture, once the object of such high hopes, quickly began hemorrhaging money and dragged its state-owned parent factory down with it.

Wages were delayed, branch factories shut down, and morale wavered. A wave of restructuring swept through the factory grounds. Buyouts of years of service and layoffs shattered the stable lives of a generation. Former coworkers scattered in every direction: some headed south to Guangdong to seek their fortunes, while others stayed in their hometown to make a living.

Decades passed in the blink of an eye. The kiln fires gradually died, the machines fell silent, and the factory grounds were demolished,