Chinese Porcelain: 4,000 years, Four Photos

"Chinese Porcelain"
TravelChinaGuide.com

"Porcelain, also called 'fine china', featuring its delicate texture, pleasing color, and refined sculpture, has been one of the earliest artworks introduced to the western world through the Silk Road. The earliest porcelain ware was found made of Kaolin in the Shang Dynasty (16th - 11th century BC), and possessed the common aspects of the smoothness and impervious quality of hard enamel, though pottery wares were more widely used among most of the ordinary people. Anyway it was the beginning of porcelain, which afterwards in the succeeding dynasties and due to its durability and luster, rapidly became a necessity of daily life, especially in the middle and upper classes. They were made in the form of all kinds of items, such as bowls, cups, tea sets, vases, jewel cases, incense burners, musical instruments and boxes for stationary and chess, as well as pillows for traditional doctors to use to feel one's pulse...."

This page is on the TravelChinaGuide.com website, a sort promotional and information presentation by "the largest online tour operator in China!" ("About Us")

The "Chinese Porcelain" page has three more photos - of two bowls and a box made of (or with?) porcelain.

It's a pretty good introduction to the last four millennia of porcelain art in China. The writing style is, I think, better suited to a print format: but the photos help break up the lengthy paragraphs.

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This isn't a criticism, at all: but I suspect that whoever wrote - or possibly translated - the page grew up speaking a language other than English. The grammar and syntax are quite clear and textbook-correct. But a few sentences aren't what I'd expect a native English speaker to create.

For example: "...Official kilns advocated concise patterns of decoration; Ru kiln in Hebei Province added treasured agate into glaze so that the color and texture appeared to be uniquely daintily creamy and could be compared with jade...."