Sorry for the delay from my last post. It has been a busy week after the holidays as I had to get to work on a few articles. For some of you who doesn't know me, apart from being a Numerologist and Tarot reader, I am also an arts and tech writer, an arts manager and an online shop owner. Right after the May Day holiday, I was invited to several Arts opening in Shanghai hence gotten pretty busy.
And now back to
Jin De Zhen (景德镇).
At the morning of Day 2, it started to rain cats and dogs while we were enjoying our breakfast inside the hostel. From the breakfast area, we could see many stalls had already set up for the weekend flea market. But the sudden downpour made everyone covered up their wares. Luckily, most things on sale are made of ceramic, hence not easily destroyed by the rain. And just in time as we were about to finish our breakfast, the sky opens up and the rain stopped.
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| Stalls continue their operations, not dampened by the rain. |
I was excited to check out the stalls. So many things to buy! But too bad, I wasn't prepared and didn't bring alot of cash. But enough to buy a few items to make me happy.
All the wonderful wares on sale at the weekend flea market. Some items reminded of my friends back home in Singapore.
After wandering inside the flea market, we roamed around the
Sculpture Factory and found a few interesting shops and ceramic factories.
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| An alley into the backstreets of Sculpture Factory |
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| Need a hand? :-) |
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| Happy Windchimes for sale. |
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| Beautiful old historic buildings in Jin De Zhen. |
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| Little Valerie playing drummer girl in a cafe. |
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| Abandoned "spare" ceramic sculptures used as decor along the alley. |
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| There were many little dogs in Jin De Zhen. And we noticed very few cats. |
And now it's almost time for lunch. We have planned to check out another area called, San Bao Village (三宝村) in the afternoon. We were told it's a cluster of "village" that have been refurbished by an artist, Jackson Lee, now owns the place. Over in this area, we were told that there's a nice restaurant that many people will travel all the way to have their meals.
However, San Bao (三宝) is so far out that we have to book our cab who ferrys us there back to where we came from.
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| Welcome to San Bao Village (三宝) |
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| Slightly eerie but creative entrance into San Bao (三宝) |
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| One of the many murals in San Bao (三宝) |
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| Entrance to the restaurant - 世外桃源 |
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| Inside the restaurant. Isn't it authentic? Like in old Kungfu movies. |
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| Guess what this is? It's complimentary tissue packets. |
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| Hand made by Jin De Zhen craftsmen of course |
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| Mommy Agatha and little Val chatting away |
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| We were able to check out the open concept chef's kitchen |
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| Happy people, hungry no more. :-) |
After lunch we wandered around San Bao and walked right into an Art Gallery and Artist Residency. The Art Gallery was closed and a banner of a Ceramic Fair which was held 3 years ago still hung up high above the gallery. I guess they must be very proud of the fair.
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| Main artist work area |
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| Lots of space everywhere |
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| Little Valerie playing hide and seek |
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| Nice view for the artists |
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A work left behind by a past resident artist
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After exploring San Bao we decide to head back out. We took a little walk to checkout some village sights before we called for our cab back to our hostel.
At this time, we experienced a little episode on how locals can be aggressive when "provoked". While we waited for our cabbie for about half an hour, a can showed up and honked at us. Thinking it was our booked cabbie, we got on. A few minutes later, Mommy Agatha noticed it wasn't our booked cab and the meter was switched on. We had earlier negotiated 25 yuan for the ride back. So we called our cab and canceled him.
But he was already on his way and stopped our cab and demanded for money as he had made his trip out. Yes, this was one of the disgusting and unethical behaviors of the local Chinese in China. Fortunately he only wanted 10yuan, so we gave that to him in order to prevent any altercations or fist fights. In the end our metered cab was less than 10 yuan, so a blessing in disguise we didn't take the booked cab and saved some coffee money.
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| Not an doorway to a shop but an outhouse. Yup, a China's classic public toilet. |
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| Little Val hitching a ride from Daddy Petter |
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| We saw this museum. But it was closed!! |
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| A villager washing in the river. |
So that's about it for our 2nd day in Jin De Zhen. But right before we head back to our hostel, we met a few artists at work inside one of the studios.
Will show you their works in Part 3 of my blog. Good night for now.
