Jiaotan is a name that points back to fire. The area lies in the hills of northern Jiangxi, not far from Jingdezhen, and its role in history was to supply fuel, firewood and charcoal for the great kilns of the porcelain capital of China. Jingdezhen has made porcelain for more than a thousand years, and from the Ming dynasty it supplied the imperial court with blue-and-white ware, exported around the world. Making porcelain needs three things: fine clay, water and a huge amount of heat, and the kilns consumed whole forests of pine, which had to be cut in the hills and floated down the rivers to the town.
The stone half of the story belongs to the Changling mining site on the other ride, and the word kaolin itself comes from Gaoling, a village in the hills near Jingdezhen where the white clay was mined, and it is one of the few Chinese words to have entered English through the porcelain trade. Together these places, with the kilns, the clay mines and the fuel zones, form a landscape of production that scholars are working to record and protect, as part of the old ceramic system.
The countryside is green and humid, with bamboo groves, pines and small villages, and the air in the early morning can be misty and fragrant. Summer is hot, sticky and thundery, spring is damp and the best time is October and November, when the air is clear and the leaves turn. Winters are cold and wet.
A practical word: riding in China as a foreign visitor is a bureaucratic project, as foreign motorbikes need special permits and registration, and independent touring is difficult, so most people reach the area by train or car with a guide. Jingdezhen, about thirty kilometres away, is a city of several hundred thousand people with fuel, hotels and restaurants, and its ceramic quarter, with working studios and the old kiln museum, is the real attraction. Buy a small bowl or cup straight from the kiln, and have a plate of local noodles with meat and vegetables.