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Zhuang Earthenware  by Mo Rui Qiu
R ight next to a major road, in western Guangxi Province, we
found a chipper man in his mid-fifties holding a long pole with
a dipper-bucket on the end. He was methodically scooping out a bucketful of red clay-colored, murky water from a wide hole in the ground and dumping the dipper’s contents onto a screened sieve. Meanwhile, the sieve emptied its contents into a larger water hole framed by cement blocks. After
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A Zhuang man sifts the clay.
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Uncle Liang works his pottery magic.
the water and clay flowed through the sieve, he knocked the remaining large particles and grassy bits from the sieve back into the first water hole. The already sifted clay sits in the cement tank until someone scoops a pile out and puts it on the ground nearby to dry. Once it dries to the right consistency, a potter can come by and begin his magic.

We were curious to follow the clay to its destination. Two other men were in the middle of a cigarette break when we walked up. Uncle Liang smiled and waved us into the front room of his home—his workshop. He took a lump of clay from the mound sitting next to his potter’s wheel, worked it into a flat circle, slapping it on the wheel. He did the same thing with a smaller lump of clay. He grabbed a short wooden pole, set it in the small notch on the wheel and began turning it swiftly, making the wheel’s speed increase greatly, the momentum continuing long enough for him to do his work. With his hands, he pulled the moving lump up so that it rose up into a wider cone shape. As he honed the shape more closely, he used a slender half-pipe bamboo to carve away some of the excess clay. At certain points, he picked up other wooden and bamboo tools that he pressed into the whirling clay creation, in a few seconds altering its shape and design.

Uncle Liang started learning this craft from his father when he was nineteen years old. That was twenty-five years ago. Now, there are fewer than twenty men in his village who still practice the art. In the local Jingxi Zhuang language, it’s called ‘haet meng’ or in Mandarin ‘zuo tao ci’ (做陶瓷). He is among the youngest men in his village who still know how to make the clay pots. The younger generation of males

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Several vessels dry in the sun.
are all going to the factories in the east looking for work. It seems that no one wants to stay behind and learn. When we asked if any young ladies practice this trade, he looked at us like, “Why would a woman want to do this?” Apparently none of the women have ever taken up this skill.

The Líng Zhŭn Village in Lù Tóng (凌准村, 禄峒) is the only village in the area that continues this traditional art. The clay vessels serve many unique and diverse purposes. There is a certain shape used to store alcohol, and another shape used for

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A finished clay urn, used to store the bones of deceased relatives.
pickling meat and vegetables. A taller shape with a stem-base stores glutinous rice. One of those vessels will sell for 30 yuan ($4.50 USD) a piece, and can store ten kilograms of glutinous rice. An even taller, more polished style serves to hold the bones of deceased ancestors that relatives dig up after a certain number of years.

On the day we visited him, Uncle Liang was not ready to fire any of his clay pots. He said that they needed to sit in the sunshine for several days first, then he could put them back on the wheel and do some more detailed design work. Only then would he be ready to fire the pots. I’m hoping to catch him on another day when they’ve fired up the kiln.