云南加强对紫陶的支持

We head now to Jianshui county in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, where the making of purple pottery is a major cultural industry. In recent years, the county has focused on cultivating fresh talent in the field, enabling a thousand-year-old craft to prosper.

This class has students ranging from 18 to 61 years old, and aims to hone the techniques of these veterans that have been in the trade for more than a decade.

"The class is very helpful to our ability to design and draw. Our artistic skills have improved," student Chen Yanfei said.

The class is jointly held by the county’s Purple Pottery Association and Hong He University.

The five-year-workshop here will turn out high level professionals, who only can receive certifications after rigorous testing.

Xie Heng, director of Purple Pottery Assoc., Jianshui County, said, "We now have four people honored as county level masters. Nine are advanced handicraft masters, 40 to 50 are professionals, while a hundred are associate professionals. So we have a complete rank of talents in this field."

The artistic atmosphere of the county has also attracted talents from outside the area. Beijing painter Liu Yehan set up a workshop here five years ago. Such imported artists have broadened the character of Jianshui pottery.

"We have artists coming from Beijing, Shanghai, Jingdezhen, Hubei and Sichuan. They have all injected vitality into our trade." Xie said.

Purple Pottery uses a unique local clay and is famous for its elegant color and fine quality. And with the push to train more artisans in the past 10 years, the number of workshops in the county has grown from 6 to more than 300, with yearly revenue reaching 300 million yuan.