Chongqing- When the sky is just turning bright, Guan Yongshuang starts to make his pottery quietly in his studio every morning. The studio named Xishanyu is an antique adobe house near a citrus grove in Antao Town, Rongchang District, Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality.

A new generation of studio potters

Guan has a unique understanding of pottery making. He believes that the process of making pottery is a dialogue with nature. It brings different inner peace to people.

The clay of the Rongchang District is delicate and warm. The texture of coarse clay is like an old man's hand, and the fine clay is like a baby's skin. Guan was enchanted by Rongchang clay about ten years ago when he saw it for the first time.

Therefore, after graduating from the ceramic art major of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Guan and his wife Li Yunshan rented a yard in Rongchang and established the Xishanyu Studio to inherit Rongchang pottery.

The couple innovated the plant ash glaze dating back to the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) and developed a series of works, covering more than 20 kinds of plant ash glazes, including ginkgo, banana ash glaze, and lotus leaf. These works not only brought a new wave of plant aesthetics to traditional Rongchang pottery but also enriched its color and artistic expression of Rongchang pottery.

Now, more than 50 pottery studios like Xishanyu Studio are dotted in Rongchang.

The long story of Rongchang pottery

Rongchang pottery, a famous traditional craft that originated in Anfu subdistrict, Rongchang District, Chongqing, and dates back to the Han Dynasty, is brimming with fresh vigor.

With a history of over 2,000 years, Rongchang pottery has been acknowledged as one of the four most noted ceramic crafts in China. It has been listed among China’s national-level representative intangible cultural heritage (ICH) programs.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when Rongchang pottery witnessed a booming business and was developed into one main industry of Rongchang District, almost every household in Chongqing and its neighboring cities used pots and jars made through the craft of Rongchang pottery to store rice and vegetables or preserve pickles.

Meanwhile, ceramics produced in the Rongchang District were also exported to Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and other regions, with an average annual export volume of over 100,000 pieces.

However, at the end of the 20th century, the once-popular pickle jars fell flat on the market, as producers of Rongchang pottery failed to transform and upgrade their products timely when competitors rose, and consumers’ tastes had also changed.

A characteristic tourist town

To break the stereotype of Rongchang pottery as pickle jars, with the help of the local government, artisans started to make innovations and enrich the varieties of their products by shifting to artware, such as tea sets and vases.

With more than 70 high-tech enterprises based in the ceramics industrial park of the district high-tech industrial development zone, the time-honored traditional craft has been brought closer to emerging technologies.

A cultural and creative pottery industrial park is gradually taking shape on a site near the Antao tourist town. It will serve as a practice base for students from primary schools, middle schools, and higher institutions, as well as a center where ceramic artists can make innovations.

Today, visitors can see a shop making or selling Rongchang pottery every few steps in Antao tourist town, a characteristic town in Anfu subdistrict. 

There is an Anbei pottery village specializing in handmade pottery in Antao tourist town. The person in charge said that Rongchang pottery has good air permeability and contains minerals beneficial to the human body, such as potassium, sodium, calcium, selenium, silicon, etc. In midsummer, if the tea soup is kept in such a container, it will not be rancid for more than ten days, and the aroma of the tea can be maintained at the same time.

In February 2022, the Chongqing government officially named Antao tourist town a characteristic one. This honor is inseparable from the local government's efforts.

The government integrated the development of the pottery industry, culture, and tourism through talents cultivation, cultural discovery, and pottery clay protection.

"I have hundreds of apprentices. Many of them are college students. Those students who received higher education always bring out excellent ideas and creations in pottery style, which is very popular with consumers," said Liang Xiancai, a national-level inheritor of Rongchang pottery, who has spent his entire life working on the cultural heritage, 

"In the future, they will be the pillars of the inheritance and development of Rongchang Pottery," Liang addressed.