Gone to Pot | The Official Schoolgirl Milky Crisis Blog
Two-hour drive out into the hinterland to Chenlu, the heart of the Chinese ceramics industry for the last two thousand years. This valley dotted with chimneys once had a solid square mile of little kilns churning out pottery for the Tang and Song dynasties. Master Wang Zhanjun, a crew-cut slowly transforming into an afro, shows me around his showroom, and the walk-in kiln where he still fires pots in the traditional method. He talks us through the glazes and the temperatures and their fluctuating fortunes, as well as the stories behind several “trick” items that we see on sale in the Xi’an Muslim quarter all the time.
One is the Phoenix Chirping Kettle, said to have been invented to make one of Empress Wu’s dreams come true. It has been designed so that the wine inside it makes a whistling noise when it comes out, which is apparently cause for marvelling in the Tang dynasty.
Another is a wine jug designed to protect Tang princelings from poisoners. Anything poured in the top goes into a reservoir. The wine that actually comes from the spout is secretly filled from the bottom, thereby stopping one’s enemies from topping one up with something toxic. Still another is a “magic” jug that has to be filled from the bottom rather than the top – the result of an intricate maze of internal bulkheads.
The best has to be the Justice Cup, a green receptacle with a dragon’s head rearing inside it. Thanks to something to do with science, a certain amount of liquid will stay inside it, even though there is a hole at the bottom — as the “Pythagorean Cup”, it was a well-known party trick in Ancient Greece. But a single drop over a prescribed maximum, and the entire contents will flow out through the bottom. The cup was said to have been presented to the Tang prince Li Mao by his father, the Xuanzong Emperor, at his wedding to the beautiful Yang Yuhuan. Xuanzong asked the bride what she thought the cup meant, and she replied that it had to be something to do with all things in moderation, lest overindulgence lead to the loss of all.
This is particularly ironic, since the Xuanzong Emperor ended up forcing Li Mao to divorce Yang Yuhuan, who as Yang Guifei, became his mistress, consort and eventual wrecker of the Tang Empire. No, before you ask, still no takers for The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, my book on the subject that has been failing to attract any publisher’s interest for over a decade now. Its time will come; there is no hurry. For my part, I spent much of the day scaring the producers with stories of the atrocities of Empress Wu, which amounts to some small revenge on them for all the times they have talked about their bowel movements at breakfast.
Jonathan Clements is the author of A Brief History of China. These events featured in Route Awakening S02E06 (2016).
