Preserving and propagating slow-wheel pottery (4)

[Photo/CRI Online]

Slow-wheel pottery, a traditional pottery-making skill, is undeniably on the decline. But in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan province, a place with a 4,000-year-long history of pottery manufacturing, there are still a number of practitioners of the ancient skill. Yu Meng is one of them.

Listed as a piece of national intangible cultural heritage in 2006, the traditional skill, prevalent among the Dai ethnic minority, is an essential form of pottery. Yu, an inheritor of the cultural tradition, runs a pottery workshop to promote the fading art. Thanks to increasing attention nationwide on intangible cultural heritage, many people have come to Yu to study the skill. Sometimes Yu also travels to schools to do demonstrations, in the hope that slow-wheel pottery will be embraced and carried forward by the younger generation.