While I wait for my kiln to cool I have a day to look around. I am travelling with my friend Len Smith and our guide/translator Chen. We decide to take the few kilometre walk down town to the new Tao Xi Chuan Ceramic Centre. This was just in the early reconstruction stage 2 years ago, when I was last here. It is now open and looking very up market indeed. There were apparently 10 major government owned fine porcelain factories in Jindezhen before the economic reconstruction. There are now none, but this one has a new lease of life as an arts precinct. Now renamed as “Ceramic Art Avenue”.

All the old factories have been cleaned out made into retail spaces, small workshops and cafes. The old kiln cars are re-purposed into planter boxes. It’s all very swish and up-market.

Later we catch the No 18 bus out to the Royal China Works. There is an excellent museum and a display centre where we watch the workers paint blue-on-white and poly-chrome enamels. The level of craftsmanship is astounding. Len was here earlier in the week for a meeting while I was head down and butt up throwing and turning. He tells me that he saw this same lady starting the drafting out of this vase. Now at the end of the week she is half way through it.

Next we watch a bloke spend 5 mins painting 2cm of one colour of one part of a border decoration! The lines so steady, so fine and so consistent. Then the lady who is applying on glaze enamel, slowly but surely in-filling the original blue-on-white pattern.

Next we visit the throwing room to see a virtuoso thrower turn 60 kilos of clay into half of a 2 part pot. He has spent the morning making 20 bases and now close to 5 pm he is making the last of the 20 top sections. he rattles them off every 5 mins.

It is a 2 man job to centre the 60 kgs and then open it up and throw it out into the open vase form.

They go at it with astonishing efficiency. The wedger has the next series of 15 kg lumps ready as the last pot is carried out the back to the drying area and the new pot is on its way.

If I didn’t already feel a bit amateurish I surely do now.