Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites

Overview

About

Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites (景德镇手工瓷业遗存) was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2026 as a cultural site.

Travel tips

Getting there: Jingdezhen North is the high-speed station, on the Nanchang-Jingdezhen-Huangshan line; Luojia airport is about 8 km north-west of the centre and has domestic flights. The older Jingdezhen station serves conventional trains. The city is compact, and taxis and buses reach most sites.

Components: the property consists of five components covering the raw-material sources at Gaoling-Yaoli, the Hutian kiln site, the imperial kiln site and the old town, all within one municipality and mostly in or near the urban area.

Imperial kiln site: in the city centre, where the Ming and Qing official kilns stood. A site museum shows kilns and layered deposits from different periods.

Hutian kiln site: in the southern suburbs, a kiln complex producing qingbai ware from the Song dynasty, now the Hutian ancient kiln museum.

Gaoling-Yaoli: in Fuliang county to the northeast. Gaoling village, in Ehu town, gave kaolin its name; Yaoli is a historic town with Huizhou-style buildings. Hire a car or take a county bus.

Old town: the Taoxichuan cultural quarter, the ceramics museums and old factory buildings are the working and trading area today, where visitors can try throwing and painting.

Time: two days cover the main sites and museums; add a third for Gaoling-Yaoli.

Season: spring and autumn are comfortable; summer is humid and rainy, winter fairly cold. A ceramics fair is often held in autumn.

Where to stay: around the imperial kiln site and Taoxichuan, within walking distance.

Why it was inscribed

The World Heritage Committee found that it meets criteria (ii), (iii), (iv), (vi) of the ten selection criteria:

(ii) an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design.

(iii) a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared.

(iv) an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates significant stages in human history.

(vi) directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas or beliefs, or with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance.

Description (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)

The serial property portrays the evolution of the production of handicraft porcelain from the 10th to 19th centuries that had profound industrial, artistic and trading influences in China and beyond globally. The five component parts reflect the processes of the production of porcelain, including the extraction and transportation of raw materials, innovations in kiln design and the spatial and social organisation of production on an immense scale. The town area featured the Imperial Kiln alongside civilian kilns, guilds and merchant associations. Jingdezhen was a centre of technological innova

Photo credits: Changjiang River, Jingdezhen: JHH755 (CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

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