Jinhua
— the salt the slow winter teaches the ham.
Not only on a wall.
“A prefecture city in central Zhejiang on the Wuyi River, named for the Jinhua hills to its north. Known for nearly a thousand years for Jinhua ham — pork hind legs salt-cured through the cold months and air-dried until the meat reads dark and sweet. West of the city, the Hengdian film studios cover a working back-lot reckoned to be the largest in the world.
Jinhua, 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.
Jinhua is a prefecture-level city in central Zhejiang Province, sitting on the Wuyi River roughly 175 kilometres southwest of Hangzhou and 300 kilometres inland from the East China Sea coast. The administrative area covers about 10,900 square kilometres and holds a population near seven million, while the urban core around Wucheng District holds roughly one and a half million. The city takes its name from the Jinhua hills, a low range that rises directly to its north.
Jinhua ham, huotui, is the city's signature export and has been recorded in Chinese cookery since the Tang dynasty, with documented production from the Song. The cure follows the cold months — pork hind legs from local Two-Headed-Black pigs are salted between November and February and then hung in airy lofts to dry through the spring. A finished leg cures for at least eight months and reads dark mahogany in cross-section, with a clean, sweet finish prized in Cantonese kitchens.
About forty kilometres east of the city, Hengdian World Studios covers roughly 7,300 acres of standing back-lot — a working film city built up since 1996 with full-scale reconstructions of the Tang palace at Chang'an, a Ming-Qing Forbidden City, and the Qin emperor's court. Hundreds of Chinese television and film productions shoot there each year. The studios are open to the public daily, with a single multi-park ticket and shuttle buses running between the standing sets.