Taizhou
— — the mountain that taught a temple how to sit still.
Not only on a wall.
“Taizhou sits on the Zhejiang coast where the Lingjiang River meets the East China Sea. Two things hold this place: the walled old city at Linhai, with stone ramparts that climb the ridge the way the Great Wall does up north, and Tiantai Mountain inland, where Guoqing Temple has held the seat of Tiantai Buddhism since the year 598. Fishing harbours, mandarin groves, and a quiet that is not the quiet of an empty place but of a place that has been here a very long time. — from the studio
Taizhou, 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.
Taizhou is a prefecture-level city on the central coast of Zhejiang Province, roughly 300 kilometres south of Shanghai and facing the East China Sea across a deeply indented shoreline of islands and bays. The city administers nine districts and counties, including Linhai — the historic prefectural seat, walled in stone in the Ming dynasty — and Tiantai County, home to the Tiantai mountain range. The Lingjiang River drains the interior to the coast at Jiaojiang. Population at the 2020 census was about 6.6 million.
The Taizhou Prefecture Wall at Linhai runs about 6,000 metres along the ridges above the old city, with a continuous parapet, watchtowers, and gate barbicans that older Chinese chroniclers cite as a study model for the northern Great Wall. The earliest sections date to the Jin dynasty in the 4th century, with the surviving stone fabric mostly Ming. Inland on Tiantai Mountain, Guoqing Temple was founded in 598 under the Sui and remains the founding monastery of the Tiantai school of Buddhism, later carried to Japan as Tendai.
Most visitors reach Taizhou by high-speed rail from Hangzhou or Ningbo, with onward buses to Linhai's Old City gate and to Tiantai town at the foot of the mountain. Guoqing Temple is open daily and the climb past the Sui-dynasty pagoda above it takes about an hour. The Linhai wall walk is best in late afternoon, when the light comes off the river. Local table specialities include jiang mian noodles and the mandarin oranges grown on the hillsides above Huangyan.