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cover adequately the details of porcelain production in Jingdezhen, Liu asked Zheng to

revise and expand the original draft manuscript. Liu then committed the funds to print the

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version of Jingdezhen Tao lu revised by Zheng Tinggui.
In 1815, the twentieth year of the Jiaqing reign period, the first edition of Jingdezhen

Tao lu was published by the Zheng family printing press, named Yijing tang ᑈ຾ੀ. This

1815 Yijing tang edition is extremely rare and extant copies of the first edition exist in

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only few libraries worldwide, among them the Shanghai Museum library. Zheng’s

“editing” encompassed much more than a straightforward compilation of the draft

manuscript. His work actually included reorganizing, compiling, and inserting textual

explanations to supplement his teacher’s draft notes. The ensuing product was the book’s

printed form, consisting of ten sections (juan) altogether. The most important of Zheng’s

1815 additions was section (juan) one, comprised of fourteen woodblock illustrations and

their corresponding textual explanations of porcelain manufacture, the significance of which

will be discussed later in this chapter. As the postscript seems to indicate, the first and last

sections (juan 1 and juan 10) were penned by Zheng and the remaining eight chapters by

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Lan Pu. Relying on the narrative articulated in the original preface written by Liu Bing

and on the postscript by Zheng Tinggui, such a division of labor (whereby only juan 1 and

juan 10 are attributed to Zheng) might seem true. Yet a close reading of the text reveals that

the issue of the text’s authorship was more complicated than was presented in the book’s

postscript. Comments and introductions in several of the individual chapters were written

during the early Jiaqing (1796-1820) period. Since Lan Pu died in 1795, he did not live to

be a subject of the Jiaqing emperor. Therefore, comments that refer specifically to the early

Jiaqing period suggest that more of Tao lu’s content can be attributed to Zheng’s own efforts