NANCHANG, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- One month after the Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, a symposium was held on Tuesday to explore how to turn the status into lasting momentum for urban development.
Themed "Preserving Cultural Heritage: Advancing the Inheritance and Innovation of Ceramic Culture," the event gathered experts, scholars and craft artisans in Jingdezhen, the ancient "porcelain capital" in east China's Jiangxi Province.
On July 25, with its UNESCO inscription, the Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites became China's 61st World Heritage site. As symposium participants noted, this was not an endpoint but the beginning of a new chapter, with the focus now shifting to how the city's living heritage can be protected, passed on and revitalized.
Wang Tongmao, deputy secretary-general of the Jingdezhen Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, said ensuring effective post-inscription efforts hinges on concrete actions that integrate conservation, utilization and industrial development, allowing heritage protection to generate broader cultural and economic benefits.
He pointed to Taoxichuan, a former state-owned porcelain factory, as an example. The site has been transformed into a cultural and creative district, where 22 historic factory buildings and industrial facilities have been preserved and repurposed. It received 12.59 million visits in 2025, generating revenue of 1.31 billion yuan (about 193 million U.S. dollars).
Wang also stressed broader public participation. He said the city is exploring mechanisms to encourage community involvement, allowing local residents to not only benefit from heritage protection but also to play an active role in safeguarding it.
Jingpiao, a community of young artists and artisans who choose to live and pursue their dreams in this porcelain capital, is among those helping keep the city's ceramic culture alive. At times, as many as 5,000 foreign creators work and live in Jingdezhen.
Among them is Yann Colleu, a French ceramic artist who first came to the city in 2017 for what was meant to be a three-month academic exchange. Drawn by Jingdezhen's open and vibrant ceramic community, he later returned to pursue a doctoral degree at Jingdezhen Ceramic University.
"I felt that I had entered a city where ceramic history was still being practiced," he said. "People help and respect each other, exchange techniques, collaborate and continuously push one another to improve, and I believe this is one reason why Jingdezhen's ceramic ecosystem remains so dynamic."
Yet keeping this ecosystem alive requires more than attracting new talent. It also depends on preserving and passing on traditional skills.
Fu Changmin, a national-level inheritor of traditional famille-rose porcelain-making techniques, said Jingdezhen's value lies not only in its surviving historic sites, but also in its living craftsmanship.
"What we are safeguarding is not just the bricks and kilns of the past, but also the living heritage carried through generations of artisans," Fu noted.
The UNESCO inscription, she added, should serve as a starting point for bringing traditional craftsmanship to a wider audience and helping more people see the contemporary vitality of the millennia-old porcelain capital.
Beyond safeguarding craftsmanship at home, the city's experience also offers insights into how Chinese cultural heritage can be presented to the world.
Lyu Zhou, director of the National Heritage Center at Tsinghua University, said Jingdezhen's successful inscription demonstrated how the historical and cultural value of Chinese heritage can be integrated into an internationally recognized framework, offering a distinctive Chinese approach to heritage communication.
Participants said that for Jingdezhen, the inscription has thus opened a new chapter in which protection, inheritance and innovation will continue to shape the future of the millennia-old porcelain capital. ■
