Mexicali
— — the desert capital with a Chinatown older than the city.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Baja California, on the border opposite Calexico, where the Sonoran desert opens onto the Mexicali Valley and the air sits dry and hot through most of the year. La Chinesca, the city's Chinatown, predates incorporation. Cantonese labourers came in for the cotton lands at the start of the twentieth century and stayed. The streets below Avenida Reforma still carry their names.
Mexicali, 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.
Mexicali sits on the northern edge of the Mexicali Valley at about three metres above sea level, directly opposite Calexico, California. It is the capital of the state of Baja California and the metropolitan area carries roughly 1.1 million residents. The Sonoran desert opens to the south and east; the Colorado river delta lies fifty kilometres east, and the irrigated cotton and alfalfa fields of the valley feed the city economy alongside maquiladora industry along the border.
Mexicali is one of the hottest inhabited cities in North America. Summer highs from June through September average 42 degrees Celsius (108 Fahrenheit) and have climbed past 50 degrees in record events. Annual rainfall sits below 70 millimetres. Winter days are mild and dry; the cold inversion in January can drop nights toward freezing for a week. The desert air holds the city's dust visible against the long horizon every dusk.
La Chinesca, the historic Chinatown below Avenida Reforma, holds the largest Chinese-Mexican community in the country, with roots in the Cantonese labour migrations of 1903. The annual Chinese new year festival fills the underground tunnels and the surface streets in late January or February. The Festival de las Cervezas runs in October; the Día de la Independencia parade on September 16 crosses the city centre. The state's wine valleys, two hours west, anchor a parallel calendar.