Young Chinese girls revive 1,200-year-old porcelain leaf cup making techniques

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cbrace
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 7:58 am

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[Found on the People's Daily]
Tu Jinge and Yu Huihui, graduates from Nankai University in China, have dedicated themselves to revitalizing traditional techniques in making porcelain leaf cup, a traditional craft originated in Ji’an, east China’s Jiangxi province.

As an unique invention of Jizhou Kiln, a famous porcelain kiln in ancient China, the porcelain leaf cup making techniques featuring the integration of a whole tree leaf into porcelain ware, have a history of over 1,200 years and have been included into China's national list for intangible cultural heritage.

Tu first met porcelain leaf cups in 2016, when she was a postgraduate student of the College of Tourism and Service Management of Nankai University.

She was deeply impressed by the craft, thinking that it was indescribably wonderful that after being burned in the kiln, natural leaves emerged unscathed and integrated into the porcelains.

The post-90s postgraduate student then became enchanted by the intangible cultural heritage.

In the same year, Tu and her friend Yu Huihui took a trip to the ruins of the ancient Jizhou Kiln located in Yonghe township, Ji'an county, Ji’an city of Jiangxi province, trying to learn more about the techniques behind the special leaf cups.

During the trip, they came across Wen Qiu, a post-80s craftsman engaging in making porcelain leaf cups, and learned that the craft was facing gloomy development prospects due to unstable output and quality, as well as a lack of marketing channels.

Such marvelous works of art and exquisite craftsmanship deserve to be seen by more people, thought Tu, who decided to make efforts and help promote the intangible cultural heritage.

The main reason why intangible cultural heritage seems far away for ordinary people is that the design of relevant products doesn't suit the market, they thought.

"We hope to innovate designs and then sell the products through e-commerce platforms," Yu said.

They encouraged Wen, who is skilled at developing colors of glaze, to create new types of glaze and helped him select pigments for the new glaze.

Finally, they decided on an ultramarine glaze. Developed from natural lapis lazuli, the glaze is safe and environment-friendly, and will never fade.

To promote porcelain leaf cups made with the new glaze, they helped make the copy for advertisement and learned photography to better present the products in photos.

One week after the new leaf cup was launched on an e-commerce platform, the sales volume of the product reached 200,000, bringing Wen an income of more than what he earned in the previous three years, while attracting more craftsmen who came to seek cooperation.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2021/0113/c90000-9808774.html
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Bok
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:01 am

Interesting article, but your topic headline sounds like some dodgy spam news haha 😂

Is it important that they are girls and young? I don’t think so...
smx
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:13 am

I think it is the official title, but however, even more important: where can we find the
e-commerce platform
?
rdl
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:47 am

Toshiyuki Suzuki, making Daisenyaki, has been researching centuries old techniques that are presently not fully understood. Here is a sake cup I purchased from him during one of my visits.
Very interesting article, thanks for posting.
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cbrace
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:01 am

Bok wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:01 am
Is it important that they are girls and young? I don’t think so...
If you had bothered to read the article, you would have seen that a young Chinese woman is in fact the protagonist of the story.
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pedant
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:01 pm

cbrace wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:01 am
Bok wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:01 am
Is it important that they are girls and young? I don’t think so...
If you had bothered to read the article, you would have seen that a young Chinese woman is in fact the protagonist of the story.
i think bok was trying to say that if the artists were middle-aged men, the article title would not have been:

"Middle-aged Chinese men revive 1,200-year-old porcelain leaf cup making techniques"

it would have probably read:

"1,200-year-old porcelain leaf cup making techniques revived"

imo the artist demographic isn't headline-worthy, but that's how the news works :lol:
smx wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:13 am
I think it is the official title, but however, even more important: where can we find the
e-commerce platform
?
+1
where can we buy?
faj
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 4:50 pm

pedant wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:01 pm
i think bok was trying to say that if the artists were middle-aged men, the article title would not have been:

"Middle-aged Chinese men revive 1,200-year-old porcelain leaf cup making techniques"

it would have probably read:

"1,200-year-old porcelain leaf cup making techniques revived"
I will add that the women that are being referred to are graduate university students, so probably in their mid-to-late twenties. Had they been male, the article would not have been titled "Young boys revive...". This can, I think, be deemed a clickbait title by reasonable people, and in my case reading the whole article reinforced that impression.
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pedant
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 5:18 pm

faj wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 4:50 pm
I will add that the women that are being referred to are graduate university students, so probably in their mid-to-late twenties. Had they been male, the article would not have been titled "Young boys revive...".
good point
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Bok
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 6:27 pm

Exactly.
rdl
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 7:07 pm

you're not thinking about translation. we in english don't use, currently, a word, nor have the will, to imply the age and often marital status of a woman. in chinese they do.
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Bok
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Thu Jan 14, 2021 7:19 pm

rdl wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 7:07 pm
you're not thinking about translation. we in english don't use, currently, a word, nor have the will, to imply the age and often marital status of a woman. in chinese they do.
Yet matter it does not, as the result is what counts. A translation should per definition make a text understood in familiar terms to the target – not the sending – audience...

To add an example in Mexican Spanish: you wouldn't translate "¡que padre!" as How daddy! would you? :lol:
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cbrace
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Fri Jan 15, 2021 2:18 am

As a native-English speaker, I've come to accept that native-speakers are in the minority among the users of English. Non-idiomatic English is so common in the world today that IMO it is not worth dwelling on, unless it leads to genuine problems. Sorry to see that non-idiomatic English is an issue for some people here.
.m.
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Fri Jan 15, 2021 3:33 am

Aside that the whole piece reads like it was written by some propaganda bot (which it probably was) :) , it seems that the technique is called Muyezhan. Quick googling shows for example https://www.ebuy7.com/item/612507508736
Not sure when was it or what exactly was "revived", or if it was ever "lost". But I would definitely be interested to see (a shard of) one of those ancient cups. Cheers!

faj
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Fri Jan 15, 2021 5:37 am

cbrace wrote:
Fri Jan 15, 2021 2:18 am
As a native-English speaker, I've come to accept that native-speakers are in the minority among the users of English. Non-idiomatic English is so common in the world today that IMO it is not worth dwelling on, unless it leads to genuine problems. Sorry to see that non-idiomatic English is an issue for some people here.
If you go back to the initial comment by @Bok, you will notice he was not mentioning the title of the article, but rather the title of your post, which does not have to be the same. To me, that is what this is about, as you are entirely right that discussing some random, translated article found on the Internet for the sake of it is not going to accomplish much.
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LeoFox
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Fri Jan 15, 2021 8:49 am

It would be interesting for them to do this for different tea leaves - and then drinkers may be encouraged to pair their tea with a cup imprinted with a representative leaf of that kind of tea.
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