Published : 26/03/2026
In recent years, growing numbers of young Chinese have been flocking to Jingdezhen, an ancient city famed for its ceramics, eager to get their hands muddy and try their hand at pottery.
Why Jingdezhen? For many, the answer lies in a desire to step away from the grind of "involution" and the pressures of high-powered urban life, and to find a place where they can slow down.
Instead of ticking off the usual tourist sights, they are gravitating towards a small city with an unhurried rhythm and a palpable sense of everyday life. What is it, then, about Jingdezhen that has made it such a powerful draw for young people?
Why Jingdezhen? What draws young people in?
To understand why Jingdezhen has become a popular destination for reverse travel, one must begin with the city’s distinctive character.
Unlike commercialised towns such as Wuzhen and Lijiang, where a carefully packaged literary charm has long become part of the brand, Jingdezhen’s slower pace does not feel manufactured for tourists.
Rather, it grows organically out of a city shaped by porcelain, one that has, through the centuries, retained a way of life that is unhurried, grounded and relatively affordable.
Here, ceramics are not museum pieces sitting behind glass, but part of everyday life on the streets. Walk through Jingdezhen and you are likely to see clay bodies left out to dry, while veteran craftsmen sit at the entrances to narrow lanes, quietly trimming and refining them. The air itself seems to carry the scent of wet clay and kiln fire.
It is precisely this slow-living atmosphere, where art is woven into daily life, that speaks to the emotional needs of many young people today. Weary of the attrition and quiet exhaustion of working life, they are drawn instead to a place where slowing down feels genuinely possible.
The figures appear to reflect that appeal: in 2025, Jingdezhen received more than 15% more visitors than a year earlier, with people aged 18 to 35 accounting for as much as 55% of the total.
Over the past decade, more than 60,000 so-called "Jing drifters" have put down roots in the city. About 70 per cent are young people, and more than half come from outside the province, or even from overseas. In their own ways, they have come to Jingdezhen in search of a more sustainable balance in life.
Read more: Seeking "Chinese" stories in Tianjin's Porcelain House
Browsing craft markets and making pottery by hand in Jingdezhen
Much of the charm of reverse travel lies in the idea of participation, and Jingdezhen has no shortage of places where visitors can get involved and make something with their own hands.
A good place to begin is either the Pottery Workshop Market or Sanbao Village. The former, a creative market held every Saturday morning, has become a gathering place for young people, with makers from across the country setting up stalls to sell their own handcrafted works, from teacups to flower vessels, each one with its own distinct character.
Sanbao Village, by contrast, is tucked away among the hills. A number of studios there offer short hands-on courses, allowing visitors to try every stage of the process — from throwing and trimming to glazing and firing — and complete a ceramic piece of their own in just two or three hours.
The village also hosts the daily Sanbao ceramic market, where a wide range of pottery stalls is accompanied by live music performances, creating exactly the kind of easy, carefree atmosphere that appeals to younger travellers.
For those who want to delve deeper, there are also pottery workshops lasting three to five days.
Many studios offer combined accommodation-and-training packages, so that by day participants can learn the craft from experienced masters, and by night stay in guesthouses converted from old kiln sites, drinking tea and chatting with fellow learners from all corners of the country.
This way of travelling — using the hands to settle the mind — allows people to slow down in a very real sense, and to feel the weight of time passing through their fingertips.
With more than 60,000 ceramic workshops reportedly spread across Jingdezhen, and skilled practitioners at every stage of the process, from wheel-throwing to painting, even complete beginners can quickly find their footing.
A city walk in Jingdezhen
What makes Jingdezhen so captivating is that the city itself feels like a vast museum of ceramics.
Rather than rushing to tick off the usual sights, it is far better to open up the city slowly, one step at a time, through a city walk.
A good place to begin is the Imperial Kiln Factory National Archaeological Site Park. There is little of the distance or formality of a conventional museum here.
Instead, archaeological remains are woven cleverly into modern architecture, allowing visitors to stroll along the walkways, look down on the kiln ruins beneath their feet, and take in the grandeur of the imperial kilns that once served the Ming and Qing courts.
From there, turn into nearby Pengjia Lane, a well-preserved old lilong alleyway. On both sides of its narrow passage stand Ming- and Qing-era houses and former porcelain shops, while traces of old ceramic trading businesses can still be glimpsed on the walls.
Jingdezhen is home to as many as 108 such lanes, and each seems to hold a story of its own. Local residents still live in them, and in the afternoon, it is common to see elderly people bringing out small stools to sit in the sun, while cats doze beside racks of drying clay bodies. This, more than anything, is the city in its most authentic form.
Towards evening, it is worth making your way to the Taoxichuan cultural and creative district. Converted from an old porcelain factory, it sets red-brick chimneys against sleek glass façades, creating a contrast that feels both striking and oddly fitting.
After dark, the area stirs gently to life. Markets, small bars and galleries begin to fill, yet the atmosphere never tips into clamour.
Settle into a modest roadside shop, sip Fuliang tea from a locally made cup, and enjoy the unhurried passage of time — for perhaps that is all reverse travel really is: a way of recovering the life that ought to have been ours all along.
In Jingdezhen, no one is hurrying you from one stop to the next, and no one is insisting on what you simply must see.
All you need to do is give yourself over to the city and let the clay, the kiln fire and the slow passage of time smooth away the anxieties you have carried with you.
Perhaps that is the real charm of reverse travel. It does not teach you how to escape life, but how to learn to live it again.
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