Ceramics festival to be held in Quanzhou

The 2012 Quanzhou Ceramics Culture Festival will be held from Nov 9 to Nov 11 in Quanzhou city's Dehua county, Fujian province. 

Blending ceramics and tourism, the event will feature various exhibitions, sales, hands-on programs and folk performances.

A highlight of the event is a special exhibition displaying 30 Dehua porcelain pieces selected from relics found on the Nanhai No 1, a sunken merchant vessel of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), which was loaded with porcelain ware and was entirely salvaged from the South China Sea in 2007.

The exhibit will mark the first time that the pieces on the Nanhai No 1 make a public appearance since they were showcased in the Crystal Palace at the Guangdong Marine Silk Road Museum in Yangjiang, Guangdong province in 2007.

Together with Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi province, and Liling, in Hunan province, Dehua county is known as one of the "three porcelain capitals of China".