Kick-wheel potter Chan Kuo-hsiang (詹國祥) tells a story of how late president Chiang Ching-kuo was puzzled during a visit to the old pottery town of Yingge. BMWs and Mercedes parked along streets lined with dilapidated buildings; conspicuous wealth amid ramshackle abodes.
Before China opened up its market in the 1980s, Yingge potters were raking it in.
Kuo-hsiang’s brother, Weng Kuo-hua (翁國華), was one of the Yingge potters hoping to make some of this money. His specialty was huge pots, a skill he had learned in childhood, decorated with the crystal glaze he himself developed over many years of experimentation.
He remembers turning his own house into a factory, to fit in all the large kilns he needed. And having no space left in which to sleep. “I was mad. I spent all my money on the kilns and on making the pots,” says Kuo-hua. “I could have bought a lot of houses for that money.”
Not bad for a man who lived with his family in the corner of a Miaoli pottery factory from the age of 4 to 20. The brothers were born in Yingge, but their father, a kick-wheel potter making large water jars in the town, moved the family to Miaoli in search of work when they were still little. They couldn’t afford rent. The boss was kind enough to let the whole family stay on the premises. Fifteen years.
It was here that the two brothers started learning their craft, coiling and throwing on the kick-wheel, the traditional potters’ wheel introduced by the Japanese and used in Taiwan before the invention of the electric version. Making large pots took a lot of physical strength.
Kuo-hua started learning properly when he was around nine or ten, working at the factory at around 16 or 17. “I was very skilled at this point, since I had started very early,” he remembers.
Yingge had been a pottery town since 1804. It flourished because of local coal and clay deposits, and because the arrival in Taiwan of the Chinese Nationalists (KMT) in 1949 meant no more pottery imports from Japan and China. Yingge started producing functional wares for the domestic market.
In the 1970s, before China opened up its market, many factories started producing imitation Chinese imperial wares. Many of these were exported, and some were sold as authentic Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing porcelains. For a while, there was money to be made, with imitation wares being sent to Hong Kong, Japan and the West.
Their father found work in one of the companies producing these export wares, and moved back to Yingge. Kuo-hsiang and Kuo-hua joined him, and worked throwing the bodies for these imitation wares. Other workers would paint and glaze them.
The heyday was 1980 to 1990. After that, China opened its market to the world. In the mid 1990s, all the big factories, most of them, started to move to China.
You won’t see so many BMWs and Mercedes in Yingge nowadays. Much of the creative work has moved out of town, where people can work in smaller studios.
Kuo-hsiang has his own factory now, making large pots to order. He also introduces the kick wheel technique every week at the Yingge Ceramics Museum, hoping to keep the tradition alive.
Kuo-hua works in a factory. He still coils water jars. He has plans of making more creative work again, resurrecting his crystal glaze. Unlike his brother, he is not very positive about the possibility of passing on their traditions.
“There is a good reason the younger generation don’t want to do this kind of work, not if they don’t come from a rich family. There’s simply no money in doing it at a creative level.”
A version of this article appeared in the Taipei Times on May 1, 2016.
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