Creating a Sustainable Narrative: The Interplay of Ecological Agriculture, Cultural Heritage, and Community Efficacy in Contemporary China

3.1.1 Jingdezhen: A UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Arts

Jingdezhen was the home of China’s imperial kilns and a center for porcelain exports in the late Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Some 100 million pieces of its products are estimated to have been sold in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century. Still the most important ceramic production center in China today, it produces high-quality porcelain, which is highly appreciated in China and abroad, and it is called the porcelain capital for its role in the domestic and international ceramic industry. For hundreds of years, porcelain traveled over land and by sea along the Silk Road to different parts of the world, acting as a medium to facilitate the cultural and commercial exchange between the East and the West.

Jingdezhen is a city of immigrants. The emergence of blue-and-white porcelain in the 14th century, during China’s Mongol Yuan and Ming dynasties, with those produced in Jingdezhen best known, is arguably the most important development in the global history of ceramics. The refined, artistic creation of blue-and-white porcelain, which originated from a Middle Eastern process of painting on ceramics with a cobalt-blue pigment, was made possible by the meeting of Samarra-blue and Jingdezhen kaolinite, but especially the cultural envoys that bought these elements together.

Jingdezhen’s tradition of attracting outside workers and cultural envoys continues. Jingdezhen became a member of the UNESCO creative cities of crafts and folk arts network. It has since organized many activities on ceramic arts, such as exchanges and partnership projects promoting cultural heritage and diversity in line with UNESCO’s priorities. It has paid special attention to capacity building, development, and exchange with Africa and the Arab states. These activities have established a platform for diversify cooperation and communication, transforming Jingdezhen into a creative ceramic city full of potential.

In a study of Jingdezhen’s modern immigrated talents, the author investigated the community of foreign traveling artists known as Jingpiao (Kuang 2015, 2017a, b). Huang Qinghua and Huang Wei, founders of the Dongjiao Center, represent a new generation of immigrant talents in Jingdezhen. Historically, a few scholars or members of the cultured elite, other than government officials or representatives, would have had the knowledge or vision to bring changes to Jingdezhen’s heritage landscape (Gerritsen 2011), but the presence of young archaeologists and their students from the Jingdezhen University of Ceramics is bringing about new and revolutionary ways of conserving, preserving, and presenting the local cultural heritage. In addition, these elite intellects are attracting outside resources in the process of making changes to Jingdezhen’s heritage landscape.

3.1.2 Jinkeng Village

The Dongjiao Center is in Jinkeng, a village located in a valley lying about eight to ten kilometers east of the city. A thousand years ago, Jinkeng supplied Jingdezhen with the high-quality china clay that was crucial to the production of qingbai ware, the bluish-white porcelain considered the embodiment of excellence in the annals of China’s ceramics (Figure 1). Qingbai porcelain was called jade from Rao because of its color and translucency. Rao prefecture is the administrative district within which Jingdezhen was situated. Therefore, if Jingdezhen is considered the birthplace of Chinese porcelain, as Huang has said, Jinkeng is the cradle of Jingdezhen.

Figure 1:

Qingbai wares are displayed in a 2015 Dongjiao Center exhibition in front of a famous North Song dynasty painting portraying scholars dining. Photo courtesy of Dongjiao Center, 2015.

Huang Qinghua and Huang Wei graduated from China’s top archaeological program at Peking University. Working with other archaeologists, they have discovered fifteen sites of porcelain kilns in Jinkeng, dating back to the Song Dynasty. Huang Wei has worked out the route along which the clay was transported and has found several mines and various pieces of mining equipment. She envisages a “millennium china stone route” (Figure 2), marking the original route, on which heavy loads of stone and fired porcelain bricks were once wheeled.

Figure 2:

One of the watermill sites along the “millennium china stone route” currently being built to connect the village and the abandoned china stone mines. Photo by Lanlan Kuang, 2017.

Jingdezhen stands at the point where the river exits rocky gorges and loses its swiftness, broadening into a shallow, curving basin five kilometers long. Dozens of streams flowing into the valley powered undershot waterwheels and iron trip-hammers, which crushed kaolinite (“porcelain stone”), to be used for making porcelain. As kaolinite was first discovered and put into application in China, China is regarded as the country that invented porcelain. Mills produced the best material in the drizzling spring, when the force of water on the pestles was robust and regular, making the pulverized earth fine and dense.

Huang Wei has said the goal is to turn the entire valley of Jinkeng into a restored heritage site. Since traces of the porcelain-making process can be found there, it is highly important to preserve the village’s historical heritage (Kuang 2015, 2017a, b).

3.1.3 Dongjiao Center for Porcelain History and Cultural Exchange

Huang Qinghua and Huang Wei are resident teachers in the recently expanded Jingdezhen University of Ceramics. As Jingdezhen’s new generation of immigrant cultural elites, they take their role as public intellects and educators seriously. In addition to building the “millennium china stone route” and a new mill race to connect with local streams, the Dongjiao Center has been established to house monthly lectures (Figure 3). Rebuilt from an old village house, it also functions as a museum. Items on display are labeled in Chinese and English (Figure 4).

Figure 3:

The front entrance of the Dongjiao Center is decorated with banners announcing the new lectures of each month. Photo courtesy of Dongjiao Center, 2017.

Figure 4:

Huang Wei, archaeologist and wife of Huang Qinghua, Dongjiao Center’s cofounder, introduces the collection to foreign scholars and travelers. Photo courtesy of Dongjiao Center, 2017.

The center, although small and simple, is effective and attracts an eager, devoted audience locally, nationally, and internationally. The Trustees of the Sir Percival David Fund in London were so impressed with the it and its organized events that they not only decided to fund the lecture program every year, but also help finance the provision of a library and a meeting room for the center, currently in expansion.

While exhibiting porcelain wares, rebuilding water mills, and organizing lectures all contribute to the educational aspect of the Dongjiao Center’s goal, Huang Qinghua and Huang Wei realize that in addition to the tangible sites and routes, the Jinkeng porcelain heritage must be preserved as a living tradition, not to be removed from its local, on-the-ground context. They realize that they must find ways to finance and support the center without damaging Jinkeng village’s natural farmland. In addition to educating students and visitors about porcelain, they believe it essential to revitalize folk customs and traditions. In 2015, as an experiment, they and the villagers revived the tradition of making rice cakes with a water-powered trip-hammer, a device essential in the china-making process.

In the fall of 2017, the center organized another cultural gathering for local artists to paint chrysanthemums flowers in full bloom, or to make chrysanthemum-themed ceramics. Such gatherings have been a well-known tradition in China since ancient times.

3.1.4 Full-Time Farmers, Part-Time Archaeologists

“Farm-Time Farmers, Part-Time Archaeologists” is the philosophy of Dongjiao Center, according to Huang Qinghua and Huang Wei. As researchers, they are fully aware that at Jinkeng village, porcelain making has not been the villagers’ primary concern for a long time. The villagers are more concerned with the daily economics of farming, mainly of growing vegetables. Since farming is a highly seasonal activity, says Huang Wei, even when Jinkeng was at its peak during the Five Dynasties and Northern Song periods (10th–12th centuries), villagers worked mainly in the fields during the busy season, and for the rest of the year they brought clay down from the mountains in wheelbarrows and made porcelain. For an annual price of 500 RMB yuan today, they rent 200 acres of land and cultivate organic rice and other vegetables. In 2016, Dongjiao Center hosted the Development Forum of China’s Beautiful Village, which refers to a decade-old state initiative that encourages coordinated economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological development in rural areas. The initiative became an integrated part of China’s 2017 rural revitalization strategy, proposed during the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Ji et al. 2021).

3.1.5 “The Porcelain Farmer” Eco-Agricultural Cooperative

Huang Wei set up an eco-agriculture cooperative to produce food under an all-organic brand called “The Porcelain Farmer.” In an interview with China’s Xinhuan News (2017), she said by promoting sustainable agriculture, villagers of Jinkeng could earn more without damaging the environment and local historical relics.

Under Huang Qinghua and Huang Wei’s leadership, signboards set up all around the village display the “Ten Rules” that Huang and the villagers have agreed on. These rules include bans on collecting ceramic fragments at kiln sites, chopping down trees randomly, throwing trash into the local river, and hunting and excavating ancient tombs. Instead, villagers grow organic rice, vegetables, lotus, and chrysanthemums.

“You must engage the local people: incentives are needed for them to play their part,” Huang said in an interview with the press. According to statistics from China’s National Tourism Administration, there are three golden weeks each year in which 70 percent of urban residents choose rural tourism activities, and each golden week leads to about million in-person visits. The Dongjiao Center’s unique setting attracts tourists who would visit the site for educational events and banquets that serve rural dishes, prepared with fresh produce from the cooperative (Figure 5).

Figure 5:

Villagers and visitors celebrate the Dongjiao Center’s third anniversary at the “Porcelain Farmer” organic rice winery in June 2017. Photo courtesy of Dongjiao Center, 2017.

Huang Qinghua and Huang Wei also have overseen the annual construction of a traditional winery, making organic rice wine that is sold online nationwide. The Dongjiao Center’s social media presence on Chinese social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo demonstrates its impact on both the online and offline community. Visitors to the Center often share photos and experiences from their time at the center, expressing appreciation for the opportunity to learn about Jingdezhen’s porcelain heritage. Yang Xiaohua, a young poet and cultural scholar, attended the first China Beautiful Village Development Forum in Jingdezhen and specifically wrote the following dedication to Huang Wei, the founder of Dongjiao Center: “We come to such a village, which is essentially a piece of land, For over a thousand years, many people have dwelled here, They come with shadows and leave without a trace, generation after generation disappears, But this piece of land still exists.” (Yang 2018).

Furthermore, comments from users on ThePaper.cn provide insight into the Dongjiao Center’s influence and Huang Wei’s role as an educator and guardian of ceramic cultural heritage. User Mai Xiaole writes, “Huang is not only an outstanding educator but also a respectable guardian of ceramic cultural heritage. Her open-minded educational philosophy is very popular among our classmates. She always encourages us to ‘read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles.’ I also had the privilege of visiting this seemingly ethereal place – Jinkeng, under the guidance of Teacher Huang.” Another user, Daoxiang laonong, shares their experience: “Last year, when I was training to be a volunteer for the China Ceramics Expo, the teacher told us about a certain teacher who discovered Jinkeng. At that time, none of the students present knew about it. It is really amazing, and I’m lucky to have read this report.” User aka adds, “Whether it is culture, technology, or medicine, it is all the same – taking root in reality and at the grassroots level, life will always flourish.”^[2] Huang Wei said of the Dongjiao Center project: “For our experiment here to succeed, cultural relics should not just be preserved but should also be properly used. They must be brought back to life. We need to conserve and inherit not only the tangible – the porcelain itself, the sites and equipment – but the intangible, the traditional ways of life” (Kuang 2015, 2017a, b).

3.2.1 Changsha Banquet: A Xiang Cuisine Research Institute

Liu Jinwu, founder of Changsha’s most high-end restaurant chain branded his culinary empire Research Institute of Xiang Cuisine. Liu is a winner of the 30-Year Outstanding Figure Award for Chinese Cuisine. He frequently serves as a judge for China’s state-level culinary competitions.

Chinese culinary heritage has a long history, with diverse regional characteristics. The cuisines are influenced by the climate and geographical conditions of different regions. Serving only in-season fresh ingredients from local sources is a culinary philosophy shared by Asian countries that follow the traditional solar-lunar calendars. Twelve Flavors· Changsha Banquets, a high-end restaurant located in downtown Changsha, Hunan Province, highlights the number twelve in Chinese classic and traditional culture. Along with The Ten Heavenly Stems, the Twelve Earthly Branches were used to keep track of time.

This was a system of counting that involved the combination of two series of signs, which yielded a total of 60 possible combinations. In traditional Chinese solar–lunar calendars, every year, month, and day was assigned a stem-branch term. Fresh, in-season ingredients and cooking concepts are employed and delivered accordingly at Twelve Flavors…Changsha Banquets, considered by many the epitome of contemporary Xiang cuisine restaurants in Changsha today (Figure 7).

Figure 7:

The entrance space at the Twelve Flavors…Changsha Banquets restaurant in downtown. Photo by Lanlan Kuang, 2023.

Twelve Flavors…Changsha Banquets specializes in Hunan Zu’an cuisine. Considered the source of high-end Hunan cuisine, Zu’an Hunan cuisine is based on the concept of “excellent selection of raw materials, fine knife processing, exquisite cooking skills, and precise taste blending,” according to Liu Jinwu and his team of master Xiang cuisine chefs at Twelve Flavors…Changsha Banquets. Zu’an cuisine was highly popular from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China and is reinvented at Twelve Flavors by incorporating nonlocal ingredients in featured new dishes, such as fresh, seasonal seafood. Since Changsha is situated south of Dongting Lake and shares borders with six other provinces, including Guangdong to the South, it is only logical for the chefs at the Changsha Banquets chain to learn from Cantonese cuisine, renowned for its superb ingredients and precise, delicate cooking.

3.2.2 Beyond Xiang Culinary Heritage: Heritage Ecology through Economic Network

Liu and his team designed all the spaces of Changsha Banquet into museum or gallery-like spaces for exhibiting tangible and intangible cultural heritages from Hunan Province. Take Twelve Flavors…Changsha Banquets, for example: guests are greeted by a trained guide when entering the restaurant space, where folksongs sung during the lotus-seed harvesting season play in the background. Guests are introduced to various local ingredients featured in Xiang cuisine, such as lotus seeds, gathered from the Xiang River, and red chili peppers, sun-dried until the color turns white, that are displaced in glass frames hung on the wall as art pieces (Figure 8).

Figure 8:

The Creative Director Li introduces key local products and ingredients of Xiang cuisine from Hunan Province at Twelve Flavors…Changsha Banquets. Photo by Lanlan Kuang, 2023.

Among the artifacts displayed inside the space of Twelve Flavors…Changsha Banquets are menu pages handwritten daily by for Mao Zedong by Shi Yinxiang, his personal chef. Hunan cuisine has a political cultural connotation for the locals and Chinese people in general. Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, including Mao Zedong (1893–1976), Liu Shaoqi (1898–1969), Peng Dehuai (1898–1974), Ren Bishi (1904–1950), He Long (1896–1969), and Zhu Rongji (b. 1928) were all from Hunan Province. The Xiang culinary heritage, therefore, is not only reinvented for strengthening the Xiang identity and distinctiveness, but also is becoming an effective strategy for attracting and curating political and cultural tourism.

At Twelve Flavors…Changsha Banquets, for instance, a calligraphy scroll written by Shi Yinxiang, Mao Zedong’s personal chef, can be seen hanging in one of the twelve reserved private dining rooms. The scroll cites none other than one of many famous quotes by Mao, associated with a Xiang dish prepared by Shi for Mao:

When Shi found a small insect in the wild mushroom dish served to the chair-364 man, Mao comforted him and said: “Wild mushrooms with small insects indicate freshness, and that the mushrooms are harmless. Besides, one will eat a peck of dirt before one die.” (Kuang 2024).

Plenty of food scholars address Mao and his food metaphor in statecraft, or the Chinese political economy of food in general, but the highlight of this case study is the interactive, heritage ecology created by implementing an effective cultural economic network.

Each year, Liu Jinwu leads his team in a visit to the intangible cultural heritage masters, or the so-called inheritors of ICH in Hunan Province (Figure 9). By incorporating each of their artistic creations in his restaurant chain, he effectively created a new source of income for supporting these masters, who are not to be away from the region they represented. In 2023, Liu and his team visited ten Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritors, such as Wu Shengping of Xiangtan Region (shadow puppetry), Wu Ning of Miao (ethnic needlework), and Xiong Chengzao of Phoenix Region (wax printing).

Figure 9:

The team from Changsha Banquets produce their own social media contents. Here they are filming ICH Inheritor Shi Change from the Weifuxing ink brush store, established in 1854 during the Qing dynasty. Photo courtesy of Changsha Banquets, 2023.

Many endangered ICHs are found in remote mountain villages or locations without convenient infrastructure, such as roads and the internet. Culture bearers recognized as ICH inheritors receive some financial support from the local, provincial, and state government, but they are tied physically to the community and remain at the geographic location that authenticate their specializations and practices. Without funds to provide physical or virtual access for tourists or outside developers to these villages, the policy initiatives from China’s state government for ICH conservation becomes much less meaningful. In this case, we see that Liu Jinwu, as an individual, an entrepreneur, and a local agent representing a private business entity, could at times fill in the administrative gaps due to the state’s policy implementation difficulties. The success of Changsha Banquets’ approach to culinary heritage tourism is reflected both in the positive feedback and engagement on social media platforms like Dianping, as well as mainstream state media like the state-owned provincial satellite TV station Hunan Television. Not only Changsha Banquets was featured in both seasons of Hunan TV’s popular food documentary, The Proud Hunan Cuisine in 2022 and 2024, Liu Jinwu was invited to share his insights at various culinary heritage forums (Finlay 2010).