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its meaning from being produced objects for the court (yu੿). Tao lu’s woodblock

illustrations thus show how a local writer employed textual and visual representations to

negotiate meanings of Jingdezhen porcelain. To Zheng, porcelain was a local product

produced in an imperial context.

1 Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual
Continuity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958).

2 This scholarly practice is reflected in the general mode of writing and research during
the Qing period. See Benjamin Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and
Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1984). In his work, Elman maps the shift that took place among literati between
the late-Ming dynasty to the dawn of the nineteenth century. He characterizes the change
as moving from philosophy to philology, or a shift in emphases on principles (yili ່ଣ)
to a method of research based on external (textual or otherwise) proof and verification
impartial observation. The key link to Jingdezhen Tao lu is that Zheng and Lan’s research
method was similarly as philological. They were comprehensive in collating previous
literary references to Jingdezhen. In chapters (juan) 8, 9, and 10, - the chapters not
included in the French translation – Zheng and Lan assiduously cited their textual sources,
reflecting a concern for proof and verification. Whether this was a process similar to
Europe’s enlightenment that Elman praises or a conservative discourse of lineage studied
by Kaiwing Chow, is not important. Jingdezhen Tao lu’s citations make it a good
reference for those interested in the array of literary texts that mentioned ceramics. For
another view of intellectual production see also Craig Clunas’ study on Ming dynasty
consumption practices: Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early
Modern China (London: Basil Blackwell, 1991).

3
Wenfang sikao’s author and compiler was Tang Bingjun, a Qing dynasty doctor who
lived during the early Qianlong years. Among some of his writings are a treatise on
ginseng and a biji record explaining scholars’ studio implements, which was called
Wenfang sikao. For a study on Zhangwu zhi, see Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material
Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (1991); For a translation of Tiangong
kaiwu, see Song Yingxing, Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century: T'ien-kung
k’ai wu, trans., E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1966). For a background to Gegu yaolun, see the preface in the
English translation, Cao Zhao, Chinese Connoisseurship: The Ko Ku Yao Lun, the
Essential Criteria of Antiquities, trans., Percival David (New York: Praeger, 1971).

4
Jiang Qi’s status as a writer of the Southern Song or Yuan period is a scholarly debate.
For reference to Fuliang xianzhi, Kangxi edition (1682) and Qianlong edition (1783), see
Xiong Liao ဤྻ and Xiong Weiဤฆ, comps., Zhongguo taoci guji jicheng ʕ国ௗନ̚