by Xinhua writers Wang Zongnan, Zheng Kaijun, Lai Xing and Huang Haoran

JINGDEZHEN, China, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) -- Liu Zili remembers the silence that fell when the kilns in Jingdezhen, China's porcelain capital, went cold.

In the 1990s, as state-run porcelain factories closed and thousands were laid off, Jingdezhen -- a city in Jiangxi Province with over 2,000 years of ceramic-making history -- faced an uncertain future. Yet amid the hardship, people here held onto their craft, and slowly, a new chapter began to take shape.

"Perhaps the world can build another Manhattan," said Liu, a former porcelain factory manager and now board chairman of a state-owned company that led the city's renovation project. "But it cannot create another Jingdezhen."

TRIAL BY FIRE

For centuries, Jingdezhen's kilns supplied emperors and fueled the world's fascination with porcelain.

But by the late 20th century, state-owned factories -- once proud exporters of porcelain -- struggled to adapt to market reforms. In 1995, as many as 42 of them ceased operations one after another in the city. Some 60,000 people were laid off. Liu's wife sat on the sidewalk, offering to type letters for strangers to help support the family. "We were like boats cast into the sea," Liu recalled.

Liu was appointed to ease the hardship. He rented out workshops to cover wages and directed most of the demolition funds toward repaying workers' overdue pensions and health insurance.

When city planners later proposed turning the last factory sites into real estate, Liu balked. "We lived through despair once," he told colleagues. "We cannot go through it again."

Instead, Liu consulted experts from across the nation and led delegations to Rosenthal in Germany and Wedgwood in Britain, convincing city planners that industrial ruins were not dead weight, but valuable assets.

"In Jingdezhen, we don't just see ceramics as a craft," Liu said. "We see the entire city as a piece of work we are handcrafting with care and devotion."

That conviction lit the spark for Taoxichuan -- a bold experiment that would redefine the city's future.

GLAZE OF RENEWAL

Taoxichuan -- literally meaning "streams of ceramics" -- soft-launched in 2015 and quickly proved its promise, as the abandoned workshops began drawing crowds.

In less than three square kilometers, red-brick buildings rose with spare, commanding lines. Galleries filled old workshops, cafes lit up dark corners, and thousands of young artisans sold their creations where kilns once roared.

Over the past decade, more than 136,000 people have moved to Jingdezhen. By now, Taoxichuan welcomed 31,000 creators, and more than 4,000 artists from 58 countries and regions have lived and worked there over time, Liu told Xinhua.

Liu envisions Taoxichuan as a place where creators put down roots, not just pass through. Apartments rent for 30 yuan (about 4.2 U.S. dollars) a day, with six-month rotations, giving young people both a reason to stay and a glimpse of the future.

Liu recalled that the first wave of creators has become industry leaders. Young people fall in love, marry, buy homes, and weave their lives into the fabric of the porcelain city.

Nearly 95 percent of Taoxichuan's creators are from outside Jingdezhen, and over 80 percent hold college degrees. More than 60,000 copyrights have been registered, spanning 11 craft categories beyond ceramics, Liu said with pride.

"You'll notice that everyone here, regardless of age or gender, shares a common trait," Liu said. "Their faces radiate a peaceful smile."

A COMPANION IN TIME

In 2012, Liu gathered a few retired factory heads to record the memories of porcelain workers.

Together, they salvaged more than 100,000 everyday relics. Those collections were kept in the Jingdezhen Heritage of Ceramic Industry Museum, which later received the 2017 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation for New Design in Heritage Contexts.

However, pressures to commercialize were constant: turn Taoxichuan into a shopping mall, fence it off as a tourist park, sell tickets. Liu chose a different path: No walls were torn down, no slogans painted over, not even those silent smokestacks were removed.

By 2024, Taoxichuan reported nearly 1 billion yuan (about 140 million dollars) in revenue. The project has been recognized as a national-level cultural industry demonstration zone and won a top prize among China's best heritage tourism projects.

Singapore's famed urban planner Liu Thai Ker praised it as intimate, refined and romantic. Locals nicknamed Liu "Half-the-City" -- pronounced "Ban Cheng" in Chinese. But Liu preferred a homophone: the same pronunciation can also be understood as "Companion of the City," a man who walks with Jingdezhen and witnesses its revival.

Liu often strolls along the ancient lanes and kiln sites, imagining craftsmen of centuries past, bent over their work as if time itself had paused. "Sometimes, I feel as though I've lived for over 700 years," he said.

"This is an ancient city that remains young, a historic place filled with youthful energy," he continued.

Liu is entering his sixties. He talks of retiring, though the thought unsettles him. He looks forward to the city's future "transformation in the kiln's fire," hoping it will reveal even more delightful hues.

He often recalls a line from the novelist Jin Yong: The meaning of life is to "live fiercely" and then leave quietly.

For Liu, that fierceness was creation itself. And in Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital he helped reshape, his story has grown beyond a personal endeavor. It stands as both an indelible chapter in the city's transformation and a vivid stroke in China's broader urban journey. ■