Page 286 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

154 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

WuSome authorities place this event in the Hung period, but

the Chiang hsi fung chih,^ though quoting the other opinions in

a note, mentions only the building of the Imperial Factory in the

reign of Cheng Te (1506-1521) in the main text, viz. : " In the be-
ginning of the Cheng Te period the Imperial Ware Factory was

established for dealing specially with the Imperial wares." The

Imperial establishment was burnt down in the Wan Li period, and

Wuagain destroyed in the revolt of San-kuei in 1675, but the most

serious blow dealt to the prosperity of Ching-te Chen fell in the

T'ai p'ing rebellion in 1853, when the town was sacked and almost

depopulated. The Imperial Factory was rebuilt in 1864, and the

industry has in a great measure revived, though it is still but the

shadow of its former greatness.

Though this great porcelain town has traded with the whole

world for several centuries, " bringing great profit to the Empire

and to itself great fame " (to quote from the T'ao lu), it seems to

have been rarely visited by Europeans, and first-hand descriptions

Weof it are few. are fortunate, however, in possessing in the

letters ^ of Pere d'Entrecolles an intimate account of the place

and its manufactures, written by a Jesuit missionary who was

stationed in the town in the early years of the eighteenth century.
These interesting letters are so well known that I shall not quote
them extensively here. The picture they give of the enormous

pottery town, with its population of a million souls and the three

thousand furnaces which, directly or indirectly, provided a living

for this host, and of the arresting spectacle of the toM^n by night

like a burning city spouting flames at a thousand points, a descrip-
tion which inspired the oft-quoted lines in Longfellow's " Keramos,"

shows us the place in the heyday of its prosperity.

A more modern but scarcely less interesting account of Ching-te

Chen and the surrounding country appears in a Consular report,

1 Bk. cxiii., fols. 7 and 8. The T'ao shuo makes practically the same statement in

connection with both periods, and Bushell (0. C. A., p. 287) gives us to understand

that the first structure was burnt down and that erected in the Ch^ng Te period was

a rebuilding. The T'ao lu states that a special Imperial factory was erected on the

WuJewel Hill in the Hung period, and that there were other kilns scattered over

the town working for the palace, and that the name Yii ch'i ch'ang was given to all

of them in the Cheng Te period.
2 Dated 1712 and 1722 from Ching-te Chen, and preserved among the Lettres edi-

fiantes el curieuses. They have been frequently published in part or in full, e.g. trans-
lated in W. Burton's Porcelain, and printed in French as an appendix to Bushell's

Translation of the T'ao shuo.