Han Ximin

    ximhan@126.com

    AT the Kangba region exhibition area in Hall 8, the hall of intangible culture, the skills of a pottery maker became the focus of visitors.

    He was making a tea pot with black clay, which was produced in his hometown of Tangdui Village, Nixi Town, Shangri-La County, Yunnan Province.

    Known by Chinese name Guo Junhua, Dangzhen Pichu is the sixth generation of his family to carry on the skills of black clay porcelain-making, which has a history of 2,000 years.

    Guo started to learn from his father, Gama Dingzhu, the most well-known and highly respected master artisan, at age 6. Guo was skilled by the time he reached his teens.

    “Like other skills, porcelain-making is easy to learn, but hard to perfect. It takes more than 10 processes to turn clay into porcelain. Each step from selection of clay, clay-shaping, drying of pottery, to firing and polishing takes great care and attention. In clay selection, pottery makers must make sure the consistency of clay is fine and it is adequately moistened. The pottery artisans shape the clay with primitive tools before letting it air dry.

    “The firing stage is the most intricate step that needs careful attention. An experienced artisan knows exactly when the temperature is fine for adding organic materials. It is the interaction between the fire, oxygen and finally the materials that turns the pottery a black color,” Guo said Thursday.

    Many people started to learn how to make the special pottery when Shangri-La in Diqing opened to tourism.

    Guo started his company, the Shangri-La Longba Tangdui Pottery Co., in 2005 to train villagers to make pottery at family workshops. The company purchases the products and sells them at tourist attractions in Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet. At present, more than 80 of 140 families in the village are involved in the pottery business.

    In addition to serving traditional household and religious items, the company now has developed Tibetan-style handicraft products serving a wider market at home and abroad.

    “Some have been sold in the European market,” Guo said.

    At this year’s fair, the Kangba region, which includes Ganzi in Sichuan, Diqing in Yunnan, Yushu in Qinghai and Changdu in Tibet, is displaying a variety of cultural relics, arts and crafts, Thanka paintings, calligraphy and tourism resources to visitors in its 400-square-meter exhibition area.