Jingzhou
— — a city that kept its wall.
Not only on a wall.
“The old Chu capital region, on the Yangtze's north bank in central Hubei. The Ming-era city wall still rings the historic core, more than ten kilometres around, with six gates and a moat. Liu Bei and Guan Yu held this ground during the Three Kingdoms, and the place still carries those stories the way other cities carry their statues.
Jingzhou, 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.
Jingzhou sits on the northern bank of the Yangtze River in central Hubei province, about 220 kilometres west of Wuhan. The prefecture-level city has a population of around 5.2 million, and the historic centre is the old Jiangling district, ringed by an intact city wall. The wall as it now stands was rebuilt in 1646 under the early Qing on Ming dynasty foundations, with a circumference of about 10.5 kilometres, six main gates, and an encircling moat fed by tributaries of the Yangtze.
The wall is brick-faced over a rammed-earth core, roughly nine metres high and ten metres thick at the base. Six gates carry the original names, including Gong'an, Yingbin, Anlan, and Yuanhe, each with a barbican and watchtower. The east gate, Binyang, is the best preserved and now opens to a long street of restored merchant houses. The wall and the moat are designated a Major Site Protected at the National Level by the State Council of the People's Republic of China.
The site has carried a city for more than two and a half thousand years. The ancient Chu state capital of Ying lay just outside the modern city until 278 BCE, when Qin forces captured it. During the Three Kingdoms period of the third century, Jingzhou changed hands between Liu Bei's Shu Han and Sun Quan's Eastern Wu, and the loss of the city to Wu in 219 led to the death of Guan Yu. The current wall outline dates from the Ming, with the present masonry largely from the 1646 Qing rebuild.