Vitality Night China | Traditional and Advanced Jingdezhen Ceramics Are Too Versatile Workers | Enterprises | Ceramics

China's development is tireless day and night, constantly moving forward, full of vitality both day and night. Starting from June 12th, "Vitality Night China" will take you into the flower market, energy base, and workshop for five consecutive days to explore the production vitality, high-quality economic development, and the charm of hardworking people in Night China.

The Tradition and Modernity of Jingdezhen, Jiangxi

Overall optimization and upgrading of the industry

The formation of the "big ceramic" pattern

At night, Jingdezhen exudes a unique charm and vibrant vitality. Jingdezhen, you must be familiar with it. Its ceramics are renowned worldwide. Jingdezhen, with a history of thousands of years of official kilns and over 600 years of imperial kilns, is a city supported by the ceramic industry for development. In the past five years, Jingdezhen has promoted the construction of the National Ceramic Culture Inheritance and Innovation Pilot Zone, from artistic ceramics to daily ceramics, from industrial ceramics to advanced ceramics, optimizing and upgrading the industry as a whole, forming a "big ceramic" pattern.

From January to December 2022, the total output value of Jingdezhen's ceramic industry reached 66.537 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.95%; There are 203 ceramic enterprises above designated size, a year-on-year increase of 45%. According to statistics from Jingdezhen Customs, the export of Jingdezhen ceramics in 2022 was 516 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 148%, of which art porcelain export was 55.43 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 89%. The millennium old ceramic culture has been constantly revived, illuminated, and heated up through inheritance and protection.

The millennium kiln fire never dies out

The beauty of ceramics stunning the world

At night in Jingdezhen, with flowing light and endless kiln fires, the millennium old porcelain capital is ancient, modern, and full of new vitality. At the Imperial Kiln Museum in Jingdezhen, millions of unearthed ancient porcelain fragments are pieced together to create the magnificent historical and cultural heritage of the porcelain capital. Thousands of ceramic masterpieces showcase the superb porcelain making techniques of craftsmen.

This place is known as the "Starry Sky Museum" by tourists. It is open 24 hours a day, and its unique light and shadow effects make countless tourists linger here at night. Looking up can reveal the starry sky of history, looking down can touch the warmth of time, and the night makes the ancient porcelain capital particularly charming. What stories are hidden behind each exquisite porcelain piece, and how are they made?

At around 8 pm, in the Jingdezhen Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Demonstration Base, many painters and craftsmen were still engrossed in painting on porcelain cups. They need to use a fine brush to gradually blend, and just one color needs to express various different tones such as intensity and depth. It should have both traditional ancient charm and reflect the novelty of modern porcelain painting.

Jingdezhen has a long history of handmade porcelain craftsmanship, and to this day, it still maintains this local production characteristic that cannot be compared to other production areas. From drawing and polishing, to adding water and glaze, to firing, every production process requires professional craftsmen to be responsible, and some processes even need to be carried out at night.

Rouge red porcelain, due to its high technological content and high cost, has been used as palace porcelain in the past, with a very beautiful color. But in fact, its current production process is only half completed. For it, among many processes, one of them is particularly important to operate at night, which is the "rolling track". Rolling tracks were once known as "icing on the cake", and professional craftsmen also called them "picking flowers".

This process must be carried out outdoors with dim lighting and indoors with bright light sources. Because its operation process is quite complex, it tests patience and skills very much. Craftsmen need to use a tool similar to an embroidery needle to draw the lower layer of blue and white patterns on the rouge color material. During the operation, the direction needs to be strictly controlled, and it must be completed in one go without any errors, otherwise it means that the porcelain body is invalid.

Representative inheritor of handmade porcelain craftsmanship, Zhu Xiaoping: Don't be fooled by the small size of this cup. It has a total of over 2600 stitches for rolling and peeling processes, and slightly larger cups may require over 10000 stitches. In our industry terminology, this cup is called "no regret after dropping the needle". After 99 steps, if the last stitch is missed, the cup will have to be overturned and restarted. While inheriting the skills of our ancestors for thousands of years, we are also optimizing our craftsmanship, and now the rate of excellent products has reached 85%. This significantly reduces the cost of our production, allowing ordinary people to own an artwork from the original official kiln vessels.

Throughout the entire process, it not only requires the craftsman to operate carefully, but also to have the ability to overall control. This skill has also made the world follow it for thousands of years.

Modern technology supports ceramic production

The beauty of Chinese ceramics amazed the world. We have seen how craftsmen integrate unparalleled skills into exquisite porcelain, preserving the elegance of ceramic shapes, the beauty of colors, and the interest of images, leaving them for a further future.

If behind every flickering kiln fire at night lies the inheritance of skills and craftsmanship, then entering the brightly lit production workshop of the Ceramic Intelligent Manufacturing Workshop in Jingdezhen Ceramic Industrial Park is the wings of industrialization and intelligence that modern technology has given to ceramic production.

Dry powder shakes the body and turns white porcelain

The New Magic of Factory Automation

After 10pm, the signal lights in the entire factory area flickered, the robotic arm extended, and the entire production process was fully automated.

CCTV reporter Yin Yiyuan: This large thing, similar to a train carriage, is called a high-temperature reduction tunnel kiln, with a length of 62 meters. After the raw materials undergo a series of processes such as molding, firing, and glazing, each kiln car carrying the product will automatically enter the tunnel. After 14 hours of high-temperature firing at 1380 ℃, the transformation from mud to porcelain is completed, forming exquisite porcelain that is as white as jade. There are two tunnel kilns like this in the entire enterprise, with a daily output of up to 30000 pieces. Because the cost of starting a furnace is very high, it needs to operate 24 hours a day. So how can we ensure its production capacity?

CCTV reporter Yin Yiyuan: This is an isostatic pressing equipment, and its biggest feature is its speed. It can make a complete porcelain blank in just a few seconds. Unlike our understanding that porcelain clay needs to be placed in a mold for rolling before production, this equipment can directly press these dry powders into shape with a pressure of 300 kilograms. Due to the low water absorption rate of these dry powders, the drying process is directly eliminated, shortening the production process by one-third.

With the help of the world's most advanced equipment technology and intelligent software, production efficiency has increased by 80% and deformation rate has been reduced from 15% to 5%. And most importantly, fully automated mechanization can enable standardized production of every piece of porcelain.

Bao Yi, Chairman of Jingdezhen Yishan Porcelain Industry Co., Ltd.: We have a fully automated glazing production line that can simultaneously glaze 10 bodies. So the production capacity of this equipment can reach 1500 pieces per hour, and compared to our traditional manual glazing in the past, a worker may only achieve 1500 pieces per day, which greatly improves its efficiency. At the same time, through this automated glazing process, it will make our glaze surface more uniform and of better quality.

Continuous technological innovation

A Hundred Flowers Bloom in the Ceramic Industry

Nowadays, Jingdezhen Ceramic Intelligent Manufacturing Workshop has attracted 246 ceramic and related supporting enterprises to settle in. While achieving large-scale and industrial production, personalized demands and flexible production also make the nights of industrial parks full of different vitality.

Reporter Yin Yiyuan from the front desk: Whether it's small and exquisite ornaments, or uniquely shaped large vases, no matter how complex the structure is, through 3D printing, as long as the shape you want is scanned by a computer and made into a mold program, you can print it. With the increasing demand for personalized ceramic aesthetics, this technology has gradually been promoted in Jingdezhen since 2020. This ceramic 3D printing company operates 26 devices 24 hours a day for production.

In the past, due to the limitations of blank drawing, irregular ceramic works required designers to expend enormous energy and time, and the results were not satisfactory. Now, with the addition of 3D printing technology, the efficiency of porcelain production has greatly improved. The production time of a handicraft has been directly reduced from the past 5 days to 20 hours, and the success rate of production has also directly increased to 100%. No matter how imaginative, it can quickly be put into reality, opening up a vast creative space for designers.

Craftsmanship and creativity are intertwined and colliding, and the ceramic industry in Jingdezhen is still expanding, making new breakthroughs. Starting from 2021, Jingdezhen has clearly identified "advanced ceramics" as the main direction of industrial development, with the goal of achieving a scale of 50 billion yuan in the advanced ceramics industry by 2025. This year, many advanced ceramic enterprises in Jingdezhen have placed orders after October. What is advanced ceramics? What else can a small piece of porcelain do?

CCTV reporter Yin Yiyuan: In the impression of many people, ceramics are a hard and fragile material that lacks toughness and plasticity. But during our visit, we also discovered the "other side" of ceramics, which is their resistance to high temperature, high pressure, and corrosion.

During the interview, the reporter saw a type of "small drum", which is a honeycomb ceramic carrier used for purifying exhaust gases from motor vehicles and ships. Why is it called "honeycomb"? How does it purify exhaust gas? The secret is hidden inside the densely packed small holes on the cross-section.

If calculated based on 750 holes per square inch, this cross-section, which is not much larger than the palm, contains over 18000 small holes. In the past two years, with the continuous upgrading of technology, the density of pores has been increasing, and the wall thickness between pores has become thinner and thinner.

For example, the thickness of an A4 paper is 0.1 millimeters, and the wall thickness of the thinnest hole currently developed is only 0.05 millimeters, which is equivalent to half the thickness of an A4 paper.

Tang Jinming, General Manager of Jiangxi Aofu Fine Ceramics Co., Ltd.: The pores are getting smaller and the walls are getting thinner. Its main purpose is to increase its specific surface area and improve its purification treatment effect. Previously, this type of product could only rely on foreign imports. In recent years, through our independent research and innovation, we have fully mastered this technology and filled the gap in China.

The current "porcelain capital" of Jingdezhen has formed a relatively complete industrial chain, including research and development design, raw material processing, production and manufacturing, packaging and logistics. Each ceramic product tells the story of China in a unique language in the new era.

"Advanced Ceramics":

Breakthrough for Industrial Transformation and Upgrading in Jingdezhen

Jingdezhen, which is based on ceramics, currently has production that is no longer limited to traditional ceramic fields such as daily use and art, but has expanded to a broader level of technological innovation. In fact, these new ceramic materials composed of alumina, zirconia, silicon carbide, etc., which are just mentioned as "advanced ceramics", are the breakthrough points for the industrial transformation and upgrading of Jingdezhen. These materials with special properties such as optoelectronics, acoustics, magnetism, and transparency are applied in multiple high-tech fields such as aerospace, biomedicine, semiconductors, chip packaging, and communication electronics. The number of advanced ceramic enterprises in Jingdezhen has increased from over 20 in 2012 to 147 in 2022. Nowadays, Jingdezhen's ceramics not only reflect technology, art, but also high-tech.

Appreciating art ceramics and experiencing advanced ceramics with high precision, what other "new gameplay" are there in ceramics?

Ceramic "New Gameplay"

Technological innovation in the "regeneration" of waste porcelain brings new vitality

Being inclusive and drawing on the strengths of others, traditional Chinese culture is reflected on generations of craftsmen, becoming a development direction that the new generation of Jingdezhen people are constantly exploring. Next, this young man is a national level patent holder who uses recycled porcelain to produce various products. Let's listen to his story together.

As night fell, workers in the workshop of the recycled porcelain production enterprise where Lv Zhi was located were still busy making a batch of ceramic accessory beads.

The inventor of recycled ceramic technology, Lv Zhi: As soon as we were launched into the market, orders kept coming in. From the Spring Festival until now, we have been working in three shifts to rush orders for our customers.

The continuous supply of orders comes from market competitiveness, and its core lies in the fact that recycled ceramics not only have strong toughness and elasticity, but can also be made into ceramic products with varying thicknesses.

The inventor of recycled ceramic technology, Lv Zhi: When I first came to Jingdezhen, I found that many of the ceramic waste produced in Jingdezhen was thrown into the waste pool, so it has a significant impact on the environment after being buried underground.

Ceramics cannot be degraded, but Lv Zhi found that the powder ground from waste porcelain can be used as raw material for glaze reproduction, but the proportion is very small, only about 5%. How to raise the proportion has become the topic of Lv Zhi's research.

By repeatedly adjusting the proportion of raw materials, just last month, a product produced by the Lv Zhi team achieved a 98% utilization rate of waste porcelain, which far exceeds that of developed countries in Europe and America.

The inventor of recycled ceramic technology, Lv Zhi: Only through continuous innovation and bold attempts can more possibilities emerge and continuously provide more power and vitality for the entire ceramic industry.

There are still many people like Lv Zhi in Jingdezhen. They gathered together because of porcelain and worked hard for their love, bringing new vitality to the ancient craft of ceramics.

Why is Jingdezhen, the millennium porcelain capital, leading the new track?

Professor Hong Xianghua from the Central Party School stated in an interview with the CCTV that the revitalization of Jingdezhen's "millennium old porcelain capital" is mainly due to three factors: firstly, focusing on the advanced ceramic industry and achieving cluster development; The second is technology empowerment, which focuses on the construction of intelligent ceramics as the main driving force through 3D technology and the introduction of top-level production lines; The third is to establish regional brands, cultivate standard systems, and provide copyright protection.

Jingdezhen's leadership reflects the acceleration of high-quality economic development in China. More interpretations of poking videos ↓