Jingdezhen Traditional Porcelain Kiln and Workshop Building Technique

Jingdezhen was the earliest porcelain city, and its industry buildings and building craft are without peer. The egg-shaped 'town kiln', most common since the Yongzheng reign of the Qing, is a flat-flame kiln combining the strengths of the dragon kiln, mantou kiln and gourd kiln, hailed as the finest kiln form of antiquity. The technique entered the first batch of national ICH in 2006.

Building and repairing a kiln is called 'luan yao' in Jingdezhen: using only specially made kiln bricks and no scaffolding or mould, masters raise the vast egg-shaped kiln body freehand from experience—something found in no other ceramic region in China. The kiln houses and workshops are themselves rare physical evidence of China's pre-industrial workshop manufacturing.

The egg-shaped town kiln and its workshops are living fossils of Jingdezhen's production relations and workshop organization. Over the past three decades many traditional kiln houses were demolished amid urbanization, and only a handful of master kiln-builders remain; since 2009 Jingdezhen has refired more than ten typical historical kilns, keeping the craft alive.

The Ancient Kiln Folk Customs Area has rebuilt and refired typical historical kilns—the Qing town kiln, Ming gourd kiln, Yuan mantou kiln and Song dragon kiln—and is the central place to experience this building craft.