Craftsmen rest in the replica of the mantou kiln on a hill near Jingdezhen, a city in east China's Jiangxi Province, Oct. 22, 2012. Porcelain experts announced Monday that they produced 3,000 porcelain items using dragon kiln in China's porcelain capital of Jingdezhen. The "dragon kiln," which gets its name from its dragon-like shape, was widely used in China's Song Dynasty (960-1279) to produce greenish-white porcelain, a landmark achievement in China's porcelain-making history. The replica is not the first of its kind in Jingdezhen, which in 2009 recreated the 300-year-old wood-fired kiln, the largest of its kind. In 2010 and 2011, the city successfully created replicas of centuries-old gourd kiln and mantou kiln respectively. Besides kindling the dragon kiln for the first time, ceramists on last Friday also lighted replicas of gourd kiln and mantou kiln, to mark the efforts to revive the country's historic porcelain-making practices. (Xinhua/Zhou Ke)
