The word kaolin comes from Gaoling, a village in the hills north-east of Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi province, where the white clay used in making porcelain was mined for centuries. Porcelain needed two ingredients: kaolin and porcelain stone, a rock that, when crushed and refined, gave the paste its translucency. The hills around Jingdezhen were full of both, and the Changling porcelain stone mining site is one of the places where the stone was quarried, crushed by water-powered hammers and refined into bricks that were carried to the kilns of the porcelain capital of the world.
Jingdezhen made porcelain for the imperial court for centuries, and its blue-and-white wares travelled the world, to the Middle East, Europe and beyond. The city still lives on ceramics, with workshops, studios, markets and museums, and the ancient kiln sites at Hutian, part of the same story, show how production developed. The countryside around is hilly and green, with tea plantations, bamboo forests and villages of white-walled houses with black-tiled roofs, typical of the Huizhou style. Wuyuan, to the north-east, is famous for its villages and the rapeseed fields that turn the valleys yellow in spring.
Riding here is a mix of good roads and complications. Foreign riders need special permits to ride in China, and organised tours are the usual way. The roads in the hills are scenic, winding through valleys and over passes, with villages and tea fields, and the surface is generally good on the main routes. Traffic includes trucks, buses and scooters. Spring is beautiful, with flowers and fresh green tea leaves, but rainy; summer is hot and humid, autumn clear and pleasant. Mount Huangshan, one of China's most famous mountains, and Mount Sanqingshan, with its granite pillars, are both within reach.
Jingdezhen has fuel, shops, restaurants and hotels. Food in Jiangxi is spicy, with chilli in many dishes, and includes rice noodles, smoked meats and freshwater fish. Tea from the hills is excellent. Visit the mining site and then a workshop in Jingdezhen to see how porcelain is made today; the journey from the stone in the hills to a fine, translucent bowl is still astonishing.