LIU Ziyue ¹, LI Songjie ², XING Peng ²

(1. Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, Jiangxi, China; 2. Jingdezhen Ceramic University,

Jingdezhen 333403, Jiangxi, China)

Extended Abstract:[Background and purpose] The exquisite craftsmanship and a highly specialized industrial development framework have sustained Jingdezhen's millennium-long status as the capital of porcelain, propelling it to the zenith of domestic and international ceramic trade during the Ming and Qing dynasties. However, in modern times, Jingdezhen's porcelain industry has faced severe challenges due to the external pressures, with its traditional production system, predominantly focused on daily-use ceramics, encountering significant hurdles. To restore the glory of Jingdezhen's traditional porcelain industry, many intellectuals, driven by ideals of national salvation, personally visited Jingdezhen. They conducted on-site investigations, delved into the reasons behind the industry's decline and proposed and implemented various reform measures from the perspective of learning from Western modern industrial systems, aiming to rejuvenate Jingdezhen and revitalize the porcelain industry.[Methods] This paper is aimed to analyze the development of Jingdezhen porcelain industry and the specific understanding of the porcelain production and marketing system by collecting and sorting out the documents about the development of Jingdezhen porcelain industry and the improvement schemes and measures published in various newspapers, magazines and monographs during the Republic of China. In addition, with the help of many memoirs of those who witnessed the improvement process of porcelain industry, such as the memoirs of relevant personnel of Pottery Administration Bureau, Everbright Porcelain Factory and Pottery Personnel Training Institute, the effectiveness and difficulties of porcelain industry improvement are analyzed through specific measures and practices.[Results] New intellectuals put forward the idea of improving Jingdezhen ceramic development from all aspects, in order to revive and develop Jingdezhen ceramic industry and change the relatively backward side of traditional manual production. It must be admitted that, since modern times, the improvement of Jingdezhen ceramic industrialization laid the foundation for the future development, providing experience for references. However, it is reasonably expected that the reform ideas of the new intellectuals could not achieve the results under the complicated social background of modern times. First of all, the new mechanized industrial system is a complex system that requires the joint efforts of all parties to succeed. In Jingdezhen small-scale, manual division of labor cooperation of traditional porcelain system, porcelain practitioners can rely on their own technology for production and division of labor. However, the modern system not only needs talents with new knowledge, but also needs capital investment, raw materials and product experiments, which is difficult to achieve for Jingdezhen at that time. Secondly, most of the workers in the porcelain industry in Jingdezhen are farmers from the surrounding areas, who not only have low wages, but also have a strong clan concept. For them, the new industrial model will mean the loss of multiple identities and tangible economic benefits. In the new intellectual reform proposal, the traditional practitioners are regarded as "backward" and "ignorant", which belittles them and pushes them to the opposite of reform. Finally, the idea of "learning from the west" can neither surpass the advanced countries in modern porcelain making technology nor give full play to the advantages of China's traditional production mode. Such an idea of improvement is fundamentally difficult to realize Jingdezhen's prosperity.[Conclusions] The relative backwardness of traditional handicraft porcelain system, the change of modern aesthetic and cultural concepts, heavy tax burden and the quality of porcelain practitioners themselves are the comprehensive factors that cause the backwardness of Jingdezhen ceramic industry in modern times. In this context, the new intellectuals put forward the idea of improving the development of Jingdezhen ceramics from all aspects, but also in order to revive and develop Jingdezhen ceramic industry and change the relatively backward side of traditional manual production. Based on this, it must be admitted that since modern times, the improvement of Jingdezhen ceramic industrialization laid the foundation for the future development, providing experience for reference. However, the reform ideas of the new intellectuals could not achieve due results under the complicated social background of modern times. In view of the social reality of the gradual decline of Jingdezhen porcelain industry, many intellectuals from different social backgrounds put forward many improved ideas from various aspects and put some ideas into practice as much as possible, but these measures actually seemed to sink into the sea, did not startle too much waves, did not change Jingdezhen's original production model, but the efforts and attempts made by intellectuals should not be denied, while the complexity and uncertainty of the transformation from tradition to modernity cannot be ignored.

Key words: Jingdezhen; reform of the porcelain industry; intelligentsia; social change