Pottery Firing (Rongchang Pottery)

Rongchang pottery is made chiefly in the Anfu area of Rongchang district in Chongqing, where residents work clay from Yayu Mountain; the craft dates to the Song dynasty, over eight hundred years old. Rongchang ware is ranked with Yixing, Qinzhou, and Jianshui among China's four famous potteries, distinguished by its fine, reddish-purple Yayu clay.

The work passes through choosing clay, preparing the body, throwing, trimming, decorating, glazing, and firing, prizing hand-thrown forms and techniques such as incised and relief ornament; its glazes, the cinnabar and western-green among them, are famed, and the fired body is thin yet hard and rings when struck, at once practical and refined.

Rongchang pottery craft is an outstanding emblem of the region's ceramic tradition, carrying the kiln-fire memory handed down through generations in Anfu. Inscribed on the national intangible-heritage list as an extension of pottery-firing craft, it is a vital living heritage of southwestern folk ceramics.

The ware can be seen at Anfu's pottery workshops, ceramic displays, and intangible-heritage events in Chongqing, a craft through which to savor the kiln fire and clay of the region.