u/that_pot_guy

Midnight in Cambridge countryside, perfect to carry on writing my YiXing stories in such chill crispy silent night.
I should have done one for answering “the change of value of teapot over my lifetime”, but paused after typing over 600 words: that’s a question too intricate and object to fit into the scale of a single post. The question itself plays the same way as the final moment of “who’s the murder” in Agatha Christie’s novel( big fan!): in order to reveal the answer , you have to follow the entire plot, “talk” to every character, and pay close attention to those tiny drops of evidence that neglected in “forensic”document.

So I decided to sit back to my role, a story teller, a “detective novel”, that gradually mapping out the answers you might wait for YiXing and teapot piece by piece, page by page. Now, shall we?

This part of my YiXing stories might be interesting to those curious about the names behind the seals. Who’s the maker/creator of your teapot? And how come I know ( in person) almost every active teapot crafter/master/dealer? I’ll explain in chronological order in a few following posts.

The truth is, I started “hanging out” with some nowadays high profile teapot crafters since the first day of preschool. If anyone says “that’s ridiculous, did you even develop a memory by that age” I’d force out a smile and politely tell them two fun facts; first, I can’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday but I can recall every moment I’d v spent in that preschool( people insist to call it kindergarten in China, but you know what I mean), second, it was a preschool where famous teapot master and local teachers would send their toddlers to, both having the similarity of tight in parenting time due to the long hours work. Including my parents.
My patents are both teachers of difference grades. The first day to school was so…. Bubbly Fascinating! Every little kid was fighting to leave in their creative tricks, tears and torn napkins and lost shoes all over the place. And among these cheeky monkeys, there were daughters sons grandkids of most teapot artists in Ding Shu ( the sub town most renowned Zisha masters resident). If you print out my preschool graduation ceremony photo and pin a dot to any kid related to teapot crafter/master, there won’t be much blank space left. Apart from me and my bestie(a funny guy who’s now married to a master’s daughter, oh then he didn’t count. Just me as the solo “survivor”)

The entire three years of my preschool was total nightmare to me, bulled by girls older and stronger( I was 1 year younger than other kids and slow learner) , guess that how I hold strong memory of that period. However my suffocating schooling became the best occasion for my parents to get in touch with teapot crafters or their siblings/parents, because they would be gathered at the gate to pick up their monkeys led out by supervisors. Imagine early 1990s in a small sub town in China, where one compound might just luckily share 1 telephone, let alone mobile phones, chatting was the one and only entertainment parents can have when awkwardly herded together. And I never thought that would turn into the prelude of the next chapter about how my mother, a teacher, became my gateway to meet more teapot masters.

Every time we’re in a mood of missing China, this Da Pan Ji(大盘鸡, literally translated as Big Plate Chicken) is my go-to cooking.

Matching purple clay teapot and ridiculously oversized tea mascot. Both are themed with 三脚金蟾（three-leg lucky toad, a sacred mythical creature in chinese cultural symbolizing prosperous and good fortune). I packed both of them with extreme cautions when moving away from hometown to England.
Mascot was half handmade, shaped in mound then finished details of lumpy spotty back and claws with spinning coin by hand. It was gifted by my dad before moving to England as a wishing for “bringing fortune to my new home”. The teapot was collected from local master my family has known for over 40 years, made of authentic Yixing Zi Ni, which he’s been saving in storage for uncountable years.

So there you go! These are the farewell presents YiXing girl would receive from local people gently expressing their love and bless to her unfolding future in another country.

Hi ya, as promised I write about my memory and observation about YiXing and Zisha teapot as a local YiXing woman. If you haven’t read the first one, please excuse that English is my second language and I’m writing without gpt or Google translation to keep the content genuine in meanings.
This post is about the street Gu Nan Jie (old south street) where the legend master Gu JingZhou used to live. I want to share with you some archived photos before it got conserved and converted into tourist spot( in a good way), and a yet-to-be-confirmed story regarding Gu’s early life that I heard from my grandma.
It might confuse you when comparing the picture to the name: it’s called STREET but more like a village. To be more accurate, Gu Nan Jie is a residential community of combined terraced shop houses stretching along HuaXi (literally translated as Painting Creek, there’s a local middle school named after it), leaning against Shu Mountain. Initial Residents of this community were either families of crafters making teapot/clay flower pot/glazed clay cistern/anything pot , including the renewed undisputed masters like Gu JingZhou and Wu YunGen, or traders of those items.
Those adore Zisha teapot or art-deco clay pot will be stunned when walking along this street, no, not by how many masters ‘former residences it gathers, but the building materials used in each shabby house( yep, they were kind derelict and started falling part before the massive restoration conducted by gov after 2017): locals used to stack slightly flawed teapots or flower pots in their back yards to build walls or vegetable plant beds. Some of these “masonry”, if not trashed or damaged, might be worth a small fortune in auction. That’s pure luxury in modern eyes, but was just life to the residents.
These photos were taken in 2017, before the restoration rolled out into action officially. I haven’t got the time to revisit Gu Nan Jie afterwords, but according to my parents, it’s “back to life” after significant restoration and repairing with TLC and deep budget by local government.
Back to Master Gu. As a Gen Y, what I know about Gu can’t be more than anyone of you because Internet is the main source of my knowledge about him. There’s just one story that I can personally tell with my uniqueness, and it involves my grandma.
One day I was casually chatting with mother about Gu, and grandma joined silently for a while before leaving a draw-dropping comment, “oh that GU, he worked for my family at early age for a period” then drifting away to cook dinner. To me the fact didn’t add up( my family by no means can be considered as loaded to employ such master!) so I chased grandma for more explanation. Turned out I knew nothing about my own grandma at all…. She was born into a land manor’s family which shortly fell into decline later days, and according to her vague memory, Gu often would come to the house to work for making a living. There’s no official historical record about this part in any archive I can hold on to, but grandma isn’t kind of person that randomly joke for fun. It’s impossible to dig out more “before 1949” memories from the last generation, they hold very tightly that part of life experience with themselves for tough unspeakable reasons. And I totally respect their decision. I’d choose to believe it, after all, teapot craft masters are also normal human being like you and me. We’re all gifted with something, either the magic power turning clay into intricate design of craftsmanship or speed reading through pages, yet we still have to make a living with or without it.

Being the narrator of these stories pulls me closer to the root of teapots and the cultural heritage of my hometown. And once again, I’m grateful for every one in this subreddit showing the unconditional patient and open mind to my posts. Thank you guys!
@Servania you can use any photo I shared here into your website if in need. Credit free for you.

In the next post, I will answer the question from a user regarding the change of value of YiXing teapots over my (not very long yet) lifetime.