Shaoxing
— — a town the water keeps writing.
Not only on a wall.
“An old water town on the Ningshao plain, threaded with canals and stone bridges that have carried foot traffic for more than two thousand years. Black-tiled houses lean out over the water; long flat-bottomed wupeng boats slide under the arches. The city gave the world Shaoxing rice wine and the writer Lu Xun, and still gives its name to the amber huangjiu poured warm in winter. Mornings the canal mist sits low until the sun comes off the courtyard tiles. from the studio
Shaoxing, 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.
Shaoxing is a prefecture-level city in northern Zhejiang Province, on the south bank of Hangzhou Bay about 60 kilometres southeast of Hangzhou. The city sits on the Ningshao plain at the foot of the Kuaiji Mountains, where canals cross the old urban core in a dense grid that has been mapped since the Spring and Autumn period. The greater prefecture holds about 5.3 million people across more than 8,000 square kilometres. Shaoxing has been a continuously inhabited settlement for over 2,500 years and was the capital of the ancient state of Yue.
The old city is built on water. More than 200 stone bridges still stand within the historic centre, including the Bazi Bridge at the eastern edge — a Song-dynasty crossing in the shape of the character for eight, in continuous use since the thirteenth century. The wupeng boat, a long covered skiff propelled by a single foot-worked oar, still carries visitors and produce along the canals. The lakes and waterways feed the rice paddies of the Ningshao plain and supply the soft mineral water that goes into the city's most exported product, Shaoxing huangjiu.
Shaoxing is the birthplace of the writer Lu Xun, whose former residence and primary school on Lu Xun Middle Road are preserved as a national memorial and one of the most-visited cultural sites in Zhejiang. The Lanting, the Orchid Pavilion at the foot of the Kuaiji Mountains, is where Wang Xizhi composed the Preface to the Poems Collected from the Orchid Pavilion in 353 CE, the most famous piece of calligraphy in Chinese history. Each spring the city hosts a calligraphy festival that draws practitioners from across East Asia.