Changzhou
— — the city the Grand Canal carries past.
Not only on a wall.
“A working city in southern Jiangsu, sitting on the Grand Canal between Nanjing and Shanghai. Tianning Temple's pagoda rises above the rooftops at 153.79 metres, the tallest wooden Buddhist pagoda in the world. The old canal quarter still has stone bridges where the water turns under tea-houses. Most travellers pass through on the high-speed line; the ones who stop tend to remember the bells.
Changzhou, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Changzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu, on the south bank of the Yangtze, with a population of roughly 5.4 million. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal runs through the centre, one of the few long stretches still in working freight use. The city sits about 160 kilometres west of Shanghai and 110 kilometres east of Nanjing on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed line. Its recorded history reaches back more than 2,500 years to the state of Wu during the Spring and Autumn period. Modern Changzhou is part of the Yangtze Delta industrial belt, with strengths in rail equipment and solar manufacturing.
The Tianning Temple pagoda, finished in April 2007 on a site of Tang-dynasty foundation, stands 153.79 metres tall, the tallest wooden Buddhist pagoda in the world. Thirteen storeys of cedar and nanmu rise above the temple complex, with a gilded spire visible across the city. A 30-tonne bronze bell hangs in the lower hall and rings at dawn and dusk. The original Tianning was first built in the early Tang, around the seventh century, and rebuilt several times after fires and wars before this current structure.
The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2014, threads through the old city. The stretch through Changzhou has been in continuous use since the Sui dynasty, when the canal was extended south in the early seventh century. Stone arch bridges from the Ming and Qing periods cross the water in the Qingguo Lane and Pi Ling districts, where tea-houses lean over the embankment. Working barges still pass through at night, low in the water with coal and gravel bound for the delta ports downstream.