（原文链接 http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/jingdezhen-china-the-birthplace-of-a-nation-and-its-white-gold-10172729.html）
昌安瓷器珍贵异常，连带着小镇的名字也高贵了起来
Changan’s porcelain was so valuable that the town’s name took on great significance
GABRIELLE JAFFE Monday 13 April 2015
星期六的早晨，小镇的瓷制品都被打包运到一个大院里。在一排一排支起的篷布摊位上，年轻的设计师们出售他们的创意产品，从优雅的整套茶具到手工绘制的瓷质耳环，应有尽有。要不是标准的普通话提醒我这是在景德镇，一个中国三线城市，我会以为自己是在伦敦东区。
It’s Saturday morning and the town’s creatives are packed into a large courtyard. At row after row of tented stalls, young designers sell their creations, from elegant tea sets to hand-painted ceramic earrings. I could be in east London, that is, until regimented tones of Mandarin remind me I’m in Jingdezhen, a third-tier Chinese city.
“中国制造”一词总让人想到劣质的垃圾货，但是以前可不是这样。几个世纪前，中国是世界艺术中心，以典雅艺术的器具闻名遐迩。当年的欧洲人第一次看见中国的瓷器，发现瓷器是如此精美，清透，远胜于他们可以拿来炫耀的任何时髦货，于是，他们认定这一定借由魔力才能制成，并给它起名为 “白色之金”。
The term “Made in China” typically brings to mind poor-quality knock-offs, but that wasn’t always so. Centuries ago, China was the world’s artistic superpower, renowned for exquisite, artisanal wares. When Europeans first saw Chinese porcelain, for example, it seemed so fine, translucent and superior to anything they could fashion that they concluded it must have been made with magic and called it “white gold”.
他们搞不懂到底瓷器是怎么制成的，但是知道它来自何处——昌南镇。昌南瓷器供不应求，很有可能早期的商贩们用这个镇的名字来称呼整个中国。混杂着异域的腔调，”昌南“最终变成了China。
They couldn’t fathom how it was made, but they knew where it came from: the town of Changnan. Changnan porcelain was so in demand it is believed that early traders took to calling the whole country by this town’s name. Mangled by foreign tongues, Changnan transformed into China.
瓷器发明之后两千多年，这个现在被叫做景德镇的小镇，仍然是世界上最重要的瓷器生产中心。第一眼看上去，它只是个很小的，不太起眼的地方，七八层高的水泥住宅楼，转角的小商店满地烟头，饭店里都用塑料椅子。但我一下子看见个肌肉发达的小个子男人，肩上的竹扁担上挑着两袋粘土。我跟着他来到了后面的巷子里，这里的手工作坊有车库大小，满是灰尘，有几十个手工艺人，全是男的，很多还穿着毛泽东时代的蓝布外套。
Two millennia after porcelain’s invention, the town, now called Jingdezhen, is still one of the world’s most important centres for pottery production. At first glance it’s a small, unremarkable place of concrete mid-rises, cigarette-filled corner shops and plastic-chair restaurants. But I soon spot a sinewy, little man carrying bags of clay on a bamboo pole across his shoulders. I follow him into a network of back alleys where dusty, garage-sized studios house dozens of artisans, all men and many are wearing blue Mao-era overalls.
他们看到我来参观他们工作很是高兴。一个整饰工人在湿润的赤褐色的粘土上刻出胚子图案。在隔壁，一位画师用兔毛毛笔慢慢地在一个花瓶上画出了一副中国山水画。再下去几间房，一个瘦骨嶙峋的男人把几个罐子放进炉中做最后一次烧釉。在另外一个更大的车间，两个陶工配合默契地转动着比他们人还高的大罐子。
They are happy for me to watch them at work. A trimmer carves patterns in the moist, ochre clay. Next door a painter glides his slender rabbit-hair brushes slowly across a vase, magicking into existence a fluid Chinese landscape. A few blocks down, a scrawny man dips some pots into a vat of glaze one last time before the kiln. Elsewhere, in a much larger workshop, two throwers work together in perfect unison to spin enormous jars, some taller than themselves.
“人是这里最宝贵的财富，他们的血液里都有着历史的烙印。”张佳（音）这么说道，她是我在“瓷器工坊”遇到的一个学生。她是新一波来景德镇学习已经流传百代，日益精湛的烧瓷技艺的设计师之一。“这是中国学习瓷器制作最好的地方了，也可以说是全世界最好的地方。”张佳补充说。
“The people are the most important treasure here, their roots are deep in history,” says Jia Zhang, a student I meet later at the Pottery Workshop. She’s part of a new wave of designers who have come to Jingdezhen to learn techniques handed down and refined over a hundred generations. “This is the best place to study pottery in China, perhaps in the entire world,” Jia Zhang adds.
不仅仅中国的艺术家们被吸引来此。“瓷器工坊”2005年由国际瓷器收藏家卡罗琳.陈创办，现在为来自世界各地的访客和游人提供瓷器制作课程和住宿。“瓷器工坊”在“雕塑工厂”里面，名字是工厂，但其实它是一座非常漂亮的两层小楼，有着中国传统的白墙灰瓦和飞檐。
Chinese artists aren’t the only ones drawn here. Founded in 2005 by internationally exhibited ceramicist Caroline Cheng, the Pottery Workshop runs classes, residencies for visitors from around the world and tours. It is housed in the Sculpture Factory which, despite the name, is a rather pretty, two-storey building with whitewashed walls and traditional grey-tiled, pointy-eaved roofs.
在“瓷器工坊”二楼的工作间里，一排排用塔帕塑料盒装着的染料粉沿着墙壁排列整齐，待被烧釉的艺术作品堆放在木头架子上。在这里我遇到一对来自加拿大的夫妻档，崔迪.格雷和保罗.莱达斯， 他们时常到这里住一段时间。“在西方，瓷艺家全部工序都自己完成，但在景德镇，每一个人都分工专业。一件瓷器可能要经过35双不同的手。”崔迪说。
In the Pottery Workshop’s second floor studio, neat rows of powdered dyes in Tupperware boxes line the walls and yet-to-be-fired artworks are stacked on wooden shelves. Here I meet Trudy Golley and Paul Leathers, a husband-wife duo from Canada, who often take up residencies here. “In the West, one ceramicist does everything but everyone is so specialised in Jingdezhen– a piece can pass through 70 different hands,” Trudy says.
保尔告诉我，他第一次来景德镇的时候，镇上只有脏兮兮的人行道却没有路灯。当时有作坊，但是产品都被商贩买去，到别处去卖。现在，有格调的咖啡馆和酒吧到处都是，旁边就是一些概念超前的商店，里面的一些紧跟时代的瓷制品摆放地很有艺术味。在一间这样的店里，我欣赏到一些无把的小小茶杯插放在一段粗木枝上，看上去像是小鸟。
Paul tells me that when he first visited Jingdezhen there were no street lamps and only dirt pavements. There were workshops but their goods were bought by traders and sold on elsewhere. These days, stylish cafés and bars pop up next to concept stores where contemporary ceramics are artfully displayed. At one such shop, I admire tiny, handleless teacups perched on a thick wooden branch like birds.
在西方，我们对于艺术家和本地居民被城市的中产阶化排挤出来已经习以为常了。但在景德镇这里，这却对传统的工匠们起到了保护作用。20世纪的大多数时间，景德镇交通不便难以进入，这却使得它的古老的传统得以保存。在去三宝瓷器艺术学院的路上，在城郊，我看到了远处的地貌，那是天然形成的小路，竹林茂盛的山丘和因为含有高岭土而颜色泛红的溪流。
In the West, we’ve grown accustomed to gentrification pushing out artists and local residents, but here in Jingdezhen, it might help save the traditional artisans. For much of the 20th century, Jingdezhen’s inaccessibility preserved age-old traditions. On the way out to San Bao Ceramic Art Institute, on the city’s edge, I get an eyeful of this remote geography – the unmade roads, bamboo-clad rolling hills and the streams running red with kaolin clay.
由本地瓷器艺术家杰克森.李于2000年组建的三宝艺术学院是景德镇第一个艺术家聚集地。在这栋古老木建筑楼房里，我看到杰克森的姐姐文英（音）带着眼镜，穿着羊毛衫，正忙着照顾来自英国和日本的艺术家们。在喝茶的时候，她跟我聊起景德镇最近几十年的变化。在城郊各处建起了许多工厂，销售价钱低廉，品质低劣的产品，通过低价竞争把真正的艺术工匠挤出了市场，也把镇子2000多年的名声搞坏了。
Set up in 2000 by local ceramics artist Jackson Li, SanBao was Jingdezhen’s first artist residency. Inside the old-style wooden building, I find Wenying, Jackson’s bespectacled, cardigan-clad sister, busy looking after artists from England and Japan. Over a cup of green tea, she tells me how Jingdezhen has changed over recent decades. Factories have popped up on the city’s outskirts, which trade off the town’s 2,000-year-old reputation while undercutting genuine artisans with cheaper, poorer quality goods.
也许还有希望。“瓷器工坊”的星期六艺术品集市和概念店的兴隆证实了，中国一些时尚的二、三十岁的年轻人对独特、有个性的产品更感兴趣。这些人追求时髦，而许多设计师们聘请到景德镇的工艺师来制作这些瓷制品，因为他们知道他们所提供的高品质和对细节的关注只在小批量生产行得通，而工业化的工厂是做不到的。
There may yet be hope. As the popularity of the Pottery Workshop’s Saturday craft fair and the concept stores attest, China’s hipper twenty- and thirty-somethings are more interested in unique, individually-made products. While they’re plumping for a contemporary look, many of the designers behind these ceramics are using Jingdezhen’s master craftsmen to make them because they know they offer quality, attention to detail and the small production runs that industrial factories can’t.
也许景德镇的工匠们最终能够存在下去。甚至，也许“中国制造”也能像从前一样再次成为声誉可靠的品牌。
Perhaps Jingdezhen’s artisans will live on after all. Perhaps even, “Made in China” will again become the prestigious label it once was.