Page 164 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 3 Enamelled Porcelain Consumption in Eighteenth-century China

Mount Meiling stands between two rivers and marks the boundary lines of Jiangxi

and Guangdong provinces. For 900 years, Meiling Pass was one of the busiest

thoroughfares in the country, especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Chinese and

foreign merchants, diplomats and missionaries from Southeast Asia and Europe would

arrive at Canton, then continued their journey north on this key route. On the return

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journey, they took the same route in the reverse direction.

Goods coming into Guangdong and out of Guangdong were transferred over this

same pass. It took a whole day to cross it. Travellers crossed on horsebacks or in

bamboo chairs and the merchandise is transported by carriers. The entire journey over

it being made through rocky terrain and covered with forests, bamboo chairs were the

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most useful and convenient tools for merchants. Armed with a sunshade, Chinese
merchants were carried over the pass in a bamboo chair. Figure 3-16 shows a scene

of transporting porcelain across the Meiling Pass. It took four carriers to carry each of

the large barrels containing porcelain pieces, while there was also some other

porcelain packed in straw matting. Each porter was said to have carried 160 French

pounds ten miles in a day, and as they were paid per pound, they carried as much as

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they possibly could. They soon arrived in Nanxiong 南雄, the town at the southern

end of the pass, where the goods were once again loaded onto small boats that

navigated the winding narrow upper reaches of the Bei Jiang River 北江河 before

reaching Guangzhou. The journey from Jingdezhen to Canton, about 400 miles, took

in total approximately twenty-five days. According to Father Bouvet, who made

91 Zhou Wenying, et al., Jiangxi Wenhua [Jiangxi Culture] (Shenyang, 1993), pp.12-13.
92 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, A description of the empire of China and Chinese-Tartary, together
with the kingdoms of Korea, and Tibet: containing the geography and history, 2 volumes. (London,
1738), vol.1, p.266.
93 Ibid. p.267.
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