Misgellanea Transport and Marketing in The

MISGELLANEA TRANSPORT AND MARKETING IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE JINGDEZHEN PORCELAIN INDUSTRY DURING THE MING AND QING DYNASTIES* 1. The pottery town of Jingezhen in Jiangxi province was one of the first great industrial centres in China and probably one of the earliest in the world. According to local traditions, pottery was made in the area around Jingdezhen-Fuliang xian-as an early as the Han dynasty. The imperial court of the Chen dynasty received pottery from Fuliang in AD 583 and during the Tang, kilns near the town which have since been excavated, supplied porcelain to the emperor on several occasions. Pottery and porcelain were made throughout the Song and Yuan periods, but the kilns and workshops remained scattered around Fuliang, and little, if any, was made in Jingdezhen itself, which functioned primarily as a market, and as a government control point for official orders. During the Ming dynasty, the industry and the town of Jingdezhen underwent radical changes. The quantity of porcelain produced increased dramatically and the quality greatly improved. Jingdezhen was transformed from a market into an industrial centre, so that by the end of the dynasty most kilns outside had closed down and production was concentrated in the town. Although this process of con- centration took place throughout the Ming dynasty, the period of most rapid change was during the sixteenth century in the reigns of the Jiajing (1522-66) and Wanli (1573-1620) emperors. A number of factors were involved in this transfor- mation. Among the most important were the interest of the imperial household in porcelain, the availability of raw materials, the technical expertise of the potters, supply of labour, appropriate management and finance and the great changes taking place in the Chinese economy as a whole in the sixteenth century. However, two factors which played an important role in the development of the industry, and which have perhaps been underestimated, were the existence of a viable local transport system and Jingdezhen's access to a nationwide marketing network.') It is possible to gauge the level of development of Jingdezhen in the sixteenth century from contemporary descriptions. The Ming dynasty official and writer, Wang Shimao (1536-1588) described it in his Minbushu: "Jingdezhen is about 20 li from the county seat of Fuliang in Raozhou prefecture in Jiangxi province. All the potteries in the land are gathered there and the people are numerous and the wealthiest in the whole province. I once travelled there as assistant administration commissioner [in about 1576] and the noise of tens of thousands of pestles thundering on the ground and the heavens alight with the glare from the fires kept me awake all night. The place has been jokingly called 'the town of year-round thunder and lightning' " 2). By the time Wang was writing, Jingdezhen had developed into a large complex of kilns and workshops with a record of producing high quality porcelain in large quantities, almost continuously for over six hundred years. It was one of a very few islands of urban industry in a sea of agriculture and small-scale rural crafts. 279 The town was well described the nineteenth by century trave'ller ? Willia?n`" ?: Milne as ' ' '' ' ' . " Ii - " , ...... , .. "an immense village, or walled town rather, stretching three miles. aJopg,,? beautiful river and flanked by a semicircle of fivefmPt.qtaip??;fr9fIJ., .?hic?,r?HW? of the earth required for the ware is brought" 3),;íl;': ;. >°:.I...:.. .. ". .:i The beautiful river is the Chang which flows from Jingdezhen down to .Lake Poyang, connecting it with the main arteries of river transport. The,rnountains pro- vided the raw materials for the porcelain industry: decomposition products of feldspathic rock which are mined, in,m4ny of the sur- rounding hills. The whole area was thickly wooded, providing copious,quantities of fuel for the kilns, both brushwood for general use, and high quality pine which was needed in the firing of the finest porcelain. Jingdezhen is in the north-eastern region of Jiangxi which lies to the east of Lake Poyang and consists of the lake's alluvial plain, the river valleys of the Xinjiang and Raohe, and the wooded mountains of the Wuyi and- Hllaiyu ranges which run along Jiangxi's border with Zhejiang and Anhu1 4) . The area has been a major pro- ducer of rice and tea for centuries; wheat, millet, buckwheat rnd; gaaliang have all been grown at times and lake and river fishing is important It .1?as?;always,bee?n a relatively productive region, part of the economically dominant Yangzi valley 6), and sufficiently developed to support an industry as-specialised as porcelain manufacture.. - ': "."".. For centuries, Jingdezhen was shielded by its geographical position ?from political turmoil and military campaigns. It was far enough inland to avoid coastal raids, and far enough south to escape the worst ravages of invasion by'northern nomads: It did, however, suffer in the early part of the Qing dynasty and',during the Taiping Rebellion. The mountainous borders limited communication by la.nd; :but water transport via the Chang River and Poyang Lake to Jiujlart'g (later to become a Port after the or via the Gan river and Pass south Treaty Opium Wars), .Meiling , to Canton enabled the industry's products to be distributed across China). , Jingdezhen porcelain was probably the most highly prized empire. The top quality wares for which the town is best known went to the imperial household or to the most powerful officials and landowners but everyday pottery was also transported all over China in great quantities. Many thousands of pieces, especially blue-and-white and the customised export wares. found their way into international ; ; "<r Marketing was always an important factor in the development of Jingdezhen, and, as has been shown above, the town was a market before it was an industrial centre. In the Tang and Song dynasties, it served as a distribution centre for the various kilns scattered around north-east Jiangxi. The .development .of rural markets in the Jiangnan region during this period, and particularly in the Song dynasty laid a solid foundation for the commercial and industrial development which was to come. There was a proliferation of linked rural markets which replaced some of the officially controlled markets, ,and the guilds, bang, were transformed from "officially sanctioned quarters consisting of merchant shops in the same trade" 9) to autonomous trade associations of brokers, wholesalers and warehousemen. It was in this period that brokers developed their mediating role .

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