International Cooperation Rejuvenates Ancient Nixing Pottery in Qinzhou China

Zhang Chuanyi knows every detail about those classic and timehonored pieces of Nixing Pottery in the exhibition hall within the big Chinese Qinzhou Nixing Pottery Industrial Park and he interprets these exhibits to journalists who were there in the exhibition from time to time. “the integration of the transition from rich color to light color, which is a characteristic of the Chinese painting artistry, with the exquisite pottery embryo is a perfect interpretation of the art of pottery.

Most of these exhibits comes from Qinzhou Nixing Pottery Industry Association, where Mr. Zhang Chuanyi acts as the Secretary General. These exhibits together comprise a completed selection from Nixing Pottery Collectors’ collections, which ranges from Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty to the Modern Society. It perfectly presents the historical development of the Nixing Pottery.

As a coastal city located at the Southwest of China, Qinzhou enjoys the reputation of“Capital of Nixing Pottery”. Nixing Pottery is one of the four famous potteries in China with a history of over 1300 years. It is described as bronze-shaped pottery with jade texture and it sounds like Zhong and Qing, two traditional Chinese music instruments.

Nixing Pottery was once the gold medal winner of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco in the United States. It became distinguished afterwards and the products of Nixing Pottery were sold to Europe, the USA and ASEAN countries.

However, Nixing Pottery did not enjoy booming industrial development and was gradually forgotten by people, becoming an unrecognized pottery art buried in time.

“Three generation of my family were Nixing Pottery potters. But the inheritance of this art stops in my son and daughter’s generation”, said Liang Nailong, a 78-year-old potter.

Liang has been in the Nixing Pottery industry for sixty years, where he is regarded as the uncrowned king because of his amazing skill of making pot rudiment. However, due to the sluggishness of Nixing Pottery industry, Liang is now facing an embarassing situation of teaching this art to the next generation.

Liang said Nixing potters do not earn high salary and that it takes them several decades to finally become a master of this art, which leads to the result that young people nowadays tend to choose other jobs, such as businessman, civil servant and so on.

According to statistics, there are now 139 Nixing Pottery factories and workshops in Qinzhou with a working population of about 8000, falling far behind when compared with the working population of at least 100,000 in other major Chinese traditional towns making pottery, such as Jingde Town.

Zhuang Chuanyi, a man who used to major in pedagogical education in university but fell in love with the Nixing Pottery, has been committed himself in the inheritance and development of Nixing Pottery Art.

“From the early folk Nixing training workshop, the establishment of dedicated Nixing Pottery school, to today’s Nixing Pottery Industry Association, all I have done aims at developing the team of professional Nixing Potters.” Zhuang holds the point that only by cultivating talents in the next new generation in Nixing Pottery, can the goal of reviving Nixing Potter be realised.

With the continuous construction of the CAFTA, Qinzhou has gradually deleloped into a marine transportation hub connecting China and the ASEAN countries, which help create a “spring” for the development of Nixing Pottery.

According to the Qinzhou Publicity Department, the local government is planning to invest 1.56 billion RMB in building a Cultural and Creative Industrial Park of Qinzhou Nixing Pottry (Millenium Pottery Town), which covers an area of 2,700 mu (about 180 hectares) to revive the Nixing Pottery culture.

In the light of the offical development plan, the Park, donated by traditional Guangdong archetectural style, is going to have Nixing Pottery theme park, museums, master workshops and other facilities, becoming an international pottery art industrial park integrating human culture, tourism, Nixing Pottery industry and education.

“The future development of Nixing Pottery is far beyond measure, which can make Qinzhou the second Jingde Town in China.”Wu Ying, the genereal manager of Qinzhou Dengfeng Limited Corperation, believes that the moderate texture of the local clay gives

more room for designing Nixing Pottery than that for other traditional famous pottery in China, and thus adapt well to the diverse market demands.

Currently, the Dengfeng Limited Corperation has expanded it business to overseas markets and created Nixing Pottery products according to the demands in different countries. “In recent years, we start revieving a small amount of orders from Japan, South Korea, Europe and the US.We firmly believe that the overseas markets will be an a new development highland for Nixing Pottery.

According to Zhang Chuanyi, in order to increase brand awareness, Qinzhou Nixing Pottery Industry Association has joined the China-ASEAN Exposition for many years and gradually met more overseas friends appreciating this art.

In June this year, the delegation of Gim Hae Celadon Ceramics,which represents the highest level of pottery-making in South Korea visited Qinzhou for communication. The two sides reached an agreement and established Sister-park Relationship. In addition, regular mutual visits to each other and holding activities in turn every year have been written into the agenda so as to promote communication concerning pottery culture in the two countries.

According to information from insiders, an exhibition tour to South Korea for Nixing Pottery is being planned for October this year.