Jilin City
— — the morning the trees go white.
Not only on a wall.
“Jilin sits on a great bend of the Songhua River in Northeast China, north of the Korean border. The dam at Fengman keeps the river running through winter; on cold dawns the warm water releases steam and the willows along the embankment freeze into thick white rime. The locals call it wùsōng, the soft tree. The clearest mornings come between December and February when the air is below minus twenty.
Jilin City, 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.
Jilin City sits on the middle Songhua River in Jilin Province, in the Northeast China region historically known as Manchuria. The city of about 4.4 million is the province's second-largest after Changchun and one of the few in China named after its province rather than the other way around. The Songhua arrives from Songhua Lake, the reservoir behind the Fengman hydroelectric dam built by Japanese engineers in 1937. Downstream the river curves through the old town, past Beishan Park, before turning north toward Heilongjiang. The Changbai mountains rise to the southeast on the Korean border.
Jilin's signature is the wùsōng, or rime-ice frost, that builds on the trees of the Songhua embankment on the coldest winter mornings. The Fengman dam upstream holds water that stays warm enough not to freeze; the river runs steaming through the city while air temperatures drop to minus 25°C and lower. Vapour rising from the surface freezes onto every willow branch and pine needle along the 10-kilometre embankment in dense white crystals. The phenomenon is listed among China's four classical natural wonders. The clearest displays come in late December through February, before sunrise.
The 10-kilometre Songhua River embankment downtown is the public viewing strip; locals walk it before dawn with thermoses of hot tea. Beishan Park on the city's northwest edge holds a complex of Qing-dynasty temples and a frozen lake used for skating. Wusong Island and Zengtong, both about an hour out of town along the lower river, are the most photographed sites for the rime trees and run small tour buses from December through February. The high-speed rail from Beijing takes about six hours; from Changchun it is forty minutes. Lodge prices run high during peak rime weekends.