The Tranquillity of Wuyuan



A local icon

Women washing by the river

If you like the tranquillity of country life, Wuyuan is the place you should go. There you will find country life at its best. Giant old trees, scattered traditional houses, live stocks,  rivers and farmlands all will make up a very beautiful landscape. As the place was pretty unknown to overseas travellers, we had to make special arrangement with travel agent for a tour to this remote part of China. Even when we reached there, the local tour guide was amazed that we knew this place and were to come up with the travel itinerary. The tour guide told us that usually Wuyuan was visited by local travellers, not many overseas visitors had heard of Wuyuan. That was a few years ago. Now most travel agents in Singapore will include Wuyuan in their advertising campaign. But for visitors who like busy city lives and plenty of shopping, probably they will skip this place. They do not realise how much they would miss. In this place you can really relax and immerse in the beauty of countryside life. You almost can feel that time really stands still and there is no need to worry about the uncertainty of tomorrow.

 

Wuyuan (婺源) is a county of Jiangxi province, People's Republic of China. It is under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city of Shangrao. Wuyuan, on the boundary of three provinces in Jiangxi's northeastern corner, has a landscape dotted with strange caves, deep secluded rocks and numerous historic sites. Wuyuan County is home to some of the best-preserved ancient architecture in China. Wuyuan's structures were built in 740 during the Tang Dynasty, its remoteness and inconvenient transportation protecting its villages from too many visitors.

 

River in Wuyuan



If you are an artist, you can put up your easel and start painting. Everywhere you will find beautiful landscapes for you to capture  on your canvas. Scenes like the bridges across the rivers, the villages, women washing by the side of river, the live stocks such as the ducklings and buffaloes and the padi fields and farmlands are interesting subjects for paintings. Occasionally you will bump into some friendly villagers who are keen to show you around the neighbourhood. Of course there are also villagers coming straight from their farmlands and trying to sell you some of their local produce to earn extra money. Do not worry, the price of such produce they are selling is generally very low.



Swimming ducklings



As we were wandering around in this vast country side, we came to a place where we saw a giant tree of more than one thousand years old standing in front of us. The tree was so huge that even 20 to 30 people could not embrace the tree trunk completely. This is the thing that most visitors would like to see, something special and unique that you won't be able to find in your own home town. We then gather together in front of the tree to take a group photo. After that some of us even tried to climb up the tree.

Tranquil country life

Waterway in village



Group photo in front of the giant tree

As Wuyuan is in Jiangxi, you will also get to visit the famous porcelain city of the world, Jingdezhen, and have a first hand knowledge of how porcelain ware are made, from the initial ware coming out of the potter's wheel to glazing and the final stage of firing (in electric furnace). When we arrived at the city, we were surprise to see that even the lamp posts were made of porcelain. These porcelain lamp posts line the streets in Jingdezhen as if giving us the unusual welcome to the city of porcelain.

Porcelain lamp post

Jingdezhen's porcelain is famous not only in China but in time it is known internationally for being "as thin as paper, as white as jade, as bright as a mirror, and as sound as a bell". A famous historian and well known scholar once wrote a poem that says (in translation): "China is well known in the world for its porcelain, and Jingdezhen is the most well-known centre, with the highest quality porcelain in China".

 

Most Jingdezhen porcelain is valued by collectors of antique porcelain throughout the world. According to media reports, a blue and white porcelain jar produced in Jingdezhen during the Yuan Dynasty was auctioned for the equivalent of RMB 230,000,000 yuan in London, UK on July 12, 2005. This was the highest price achieved by a piece of porcelain in the history of all porcelain auctions of the world. The reason for the high price is experts believe that the blue and white Yuan Dynasty porcelain has a dominant position in the history of Chinese ceramics. It represents the pinnacle of the development of Chinese blue and white porcelain.

Worker at Jingdezhen

A blue and white plate

Jingdezhen's natural resources include kaolin, coal, manganese, and lime, but it is the kaolin that has made the city famous in China and the world. For over a millennium, its unique kaolin has enabled Jingdezhen to make high-quality porcelain. Before we left Jingdezhen, we visited a few porcelain shops and purchased some good porcelain ware at very affordable price. There are also some high quality staff (such as porcelain paintings and crafts) produced by famous Jingdezhen artists, these were generally beyond the shoe string budgets of most travellers.


Painting on vase before firing