The land of ceramics

In our last year in China, we finally took advantage of our location and really did some traveling. One of the places I went in April is a town that is about an hour flight from Shanghai called Jingdezhen (pronounced jing-da-jen), and it is the home of the blue and white ceramics that China is known for. One of my friends from work is an art teacher and has spent his summers working and creating ceramic pieces in Jingdezhen, and my good friend Tina had been there before and loved it. So she helped plan a quick weekend trip for 9 of us and it was amazing. We went to the pop up market where the students sell their pieces, and wandered through the alleys in the village where we stayed. You could go up any of the streets and find people, painting, or throwing clay, or selling beautiful ceramic pieces. It can be really overwhelming living in China, knowing that many of the things we use everyday come from somewhere in this country but never having a connection with the people or the places that they originate from is frustrating. Being able to meet the artists, and see them in action was an incredible experience. Our guide took us to a workshop that specializes in making and selling huge pieces of pottery. It was so impressive to see the men in the courtyard working two at a time to throw these huge pots, and then to go into one of the buildings where a kiln the size of a small shipping container was fired up, and to wander further to find an artist who was spending three weeks designing and creating pieces before heading back to London. We had a fantastic time, and I bought plenty of pieces that I hope will make it without breaking in our shipment back to the US. If we were staying any longer in China, I would definitely go back to Jingdezhen for a longer period of time, it's near yellow mountain in Jiangxi Province, which has a very south east Asian feel. It was lush and green and it's a small city by China standards, with a population just under 2 million, it just really felt totally different from Shanghai and the hustle and bustle of a huge city. The night before we left for Jingdezhen my cell phone got stolen, right out of my pocket, so I was forced to focused on just using my SLR. I think I took better photos, I guess that's the silver lining in forking over a small fortune for a new iPhone. Looking back at these photos, I'm so glad I had the opportunity to travel there before leaving China. I'm ready to leave though. It has been a wild adventure the last three years. I've grown tremendously both professionally, and personally. I'm nervous about repatriating, but excited to settle down somewhere outside of Chicago and have a yard and a garden and be back near my favorite place on earth: Lake Michigan.