5 Days in Jingdezhen

Named for the Jingde reign of 1004-1007, the city has fired porcelain for over 1,000 years. Taoyangli folds together the Ming imperial kiln factory — serving the court from the early Ming until 1911 — the waste pits of smashed rejects, the 2020 brick-vaulted museum, and the Dragon Pearl Pavilion that stands for the whole city.

1. jingdezhen taoyangli imperial kiln

Give the 5A folk park a full morning — Song dragon kiln, Ming gourd kiln, and the Qing egg-shaped town kiln re-fired in 2009, plus a porcelain-instrument show around noon. Entry about 95 yuan. Spend the afternoon among the ceramic markets around People's Square, where table sets sell by the crate.

1. jingdezhen ancient kiln park

The free China Ceramics Museum lines up some 50,000 pieces, Song qingbai to export ware, with the deadpan arhat that went viral. Walk it off at Taoxichuan, the 1950s factory reopened as a creative quarter in 2016 — studios, a bookshop, and the evening bazaar.

1. jingdezhen china ceramics museum
2. jingdezhen taoxichuan

Sanbao's five-kilometre valley holds hundreds of studios; Li Jianshen opened the first international one in a farmhouse in the 1990s. Many welcome walk-in visitors, and some offer wheel time. On Saturday afternoons the Pottery Workshop's market at the Sculpture Factory — the group dates to 1985 in Hong Kong — fills with young ceramicists.

1. jingdezhen sanbao porcelain valley
2. jingdezhen pottery workshop market

Just north of town, Fuliang's yamen is billed as the best-preserved county government seat south of the Yangtze; its magistrates ranked fifth grade, a notch above peers, on the strength of tea taxes. Beside it stands a red-brick pagoda closing on 1,000 years old. Evening HSR from the North station — Nanchang about an hour, Wuyuan 30 minutes.

1. jingdezhen fuliang ancient yamen
2. jingdezhen fuliang red pagoda