by Xinhua writers Gui Tao and Huang Haoran
NANCHANG, April 2 (Xinhua) -- My encounter with Jingdezhen, an eastern Chinese city with over 1,700 years of ceramic-making history, began, improbably, with a lump of clay.
In a modest workshop, tourists gathered to experience the ancient pleasure of shaping earth by hand. The clay spun obediently at first, then faltered the moment attention wavered. A craftsman nearby offered quiet instruction: steady your mind, steady your hands. Only then can the object in your imagination take shape.
For centuries, the essence of porcelain-making here has rested on a deceptively simple principle: unity of mind and hand. In Jingdezhen, the hand is not merely an instrument of thought. It is thought itself. Porcelain emerges when human intention passes through earth and fire, becoming something durable enough to outlast its maker. In the process, humans have shaped more than objects. They have shaped systems of order, taste, and labor itself.
The Chinese "porcelain capital" offers something increasingly rare: the experience of making. Even in an era when algorithms can orchestrate machines and ideas can become reality at digital speed, the city remains unapologetically committed to craft. The value of a handmade porcelain piece still depends on the skill and reputation of the artisan. The traditional process, often described as requiring "72 steps," endures less as a literal count than as a philosophy: every step is a decision, and every decision leaves a human trace.
Consider the kiln master Hu Jiawang, reputedly the last of his kind in Jingdezhen. At 82, he can gauge the temperature of a wood-fired kiln by simply spitting into it and observing how quickly the moisture evaporates. "In the kiln, the wind changes, so do the wood and the glaze," he explained. "The fire is nothing but alive."
Hu is no nostalgic Neo-Luddite. He acknowledged that machines can shape clay faster, and AI can generate decorative patterns in seconds. But, he insisted, neither can produce a vessel with "soul." A slight tremor in a human hand and a barely perceptible deviation in a brushstroke are not flaws, but signatures of life.
He spoke candidly about Jingdezhen's decline in the 19th century, when it fell behind technologically. While British kilns adopted thermometers after the Industrial Revolution, Jingdezhen still relied on incense sticks to measure time. Within a century, the city had lost its edge.
The lesson, Hu suggested, is not to resist technology but to recognize its limits. "Use it where it excels," he said. "Hold fast to what only humans can do."
Today, a new wave of technology is quietly transforming the city, the most important ceramic production center in China. Robots sell ceramic "blind boxes," while university labs experiment with AI-assisted kiln firing, using real-time data to fine-tune temperature and flame. Algorithms piece together fragments of ancient porcelain, and blockchain helps ensure the authenticity of renowned brands. Each innovation pushes porcelain-making toward greater precision, higher yields, lower costs, and fewer surprises, but never fully replaces the human touch.
And yet, Jingdezhen resists total control. It preserves a margin of unpredictability.
In industrial logic, uncertainty is noise. In human experience, however, it is meaningful. A wood-fired kiln, even with identical materials and conditions, produces wildly different results each time. The moment the kiln is opened resembles a ritual of revelation. A single accident, say, a sudden drop in temperature caused by a power outage, can transform an ordinary piece into something extraordinary.
More unpredictable still is the human being. An artisan's mood seeps into the work: joy lifts a line while sorrow weighs it down. AI can replicate the form, but not the feelings behind it.
"In the end, it's not about who makes something better," 87-year-old local master craftsman Liu Yuanchang told me. "It's about who makes it true." By "true," he clarified, he meant something elusive yet precise: genuine human emotion embedded in the form.
He described Jingdezhen as a laboratory, not of materials, but of humanity itself. It is in here that tradition and technology, craft and code, are constantly tested against one another. The central question remains: what can be delegated to machines, and what must remain human?
Visitors often find themselves lingering in Jingdezhen longer than planned. It is tempting to interpret this as a form of escape from modern life. That explanation, however, falls short.
What draws people here is not retreat, but recognition. For over 1,000 years, Jingdezhen has persisted through a form of manufacturing that is, by modern standards, inefficient. Yet it respects something fundamental: the human urge to create, and to see oneself reflected in what one makes.
Even historically, this has been a place defined less by imperial demand than by human effort. The legendary "kiln god" in Jingdezhen was not a deity but a craftsman who sacrificed himself to perfect porcelain firing. The legend endures because it elevates the role of the individual maker to near-mythic status.
Today, that impulse resurfaces in unexpected places. Finance professionals I know in metropolises such as London and Shanghai spend weekends learning bookbinding or weaving. Surrounded by tokens, indices and algorithms, they seek something tangible, something real. In Jingdezhen, that instinct is amplified. Here, the hand regains its dignity.
As AI advances, it is our cognitive domain, the realm of the mind, that feels increasingly encroached upon. Paradoxically, it is the hand that re-emerges as a frontier of human identity.
Jingdezhen is home to nearly 100,000 artisans, making it one of the largest craft communities in the world. Some see it as "humanity's last sanctuary in the age of AI," where the future of humanity may lie not in outcompeting machines, but in redefining what only humans can do.
"Craftsmanship may very well be the future of humanity," said Liu Zili, board chairman of a state-owned company behind the revival of Jingdezhen's major art district Taoxichuan.
In Jingdezhen, artists from around the world arrive like migratory birds, staying for months at a time in a city that has been, for centuries, a mecca for ceramists and porcelain collectors.
They bring different cultural vocabularies but work within the same ancient techniques. A British artist sculpts surreal hybrid fruits; an Israeli biologist recreates cellular structures observed under a microscope; an Indian myth finds new life in expressive ceramic forms; a Spanish artist explores industrial pollution through clay.
In Jingdezhen, there is no hierarchy of ideas. Diverse perspectives enter the same kiln, subjected to the same fire. What emerges is not just porcelain, but possibility.
That, perhaps, is the city's quiet answer to the question it poses: what is human, and what is a human for? ■
