When Min Wei kneaded the soft earth along the bank of the Yellow River as he played as a child, he never expected that the earth would help him forge a successful career.
The 32-year-old was born in Longshan, in the city Zhangqiu, in east China's Shandong Province. This was where relics from the Longshan Culture which existed around 4,000 years ago in the late Neolithic period were found in 1936.
The Longshan Culture was famed for its exquisite and distinguished black pottery. It has also been called the Black Pottery Culture.
Of the black pottery excavated in Longshan, a kind of eggshell-thin long-handled cup was regarded as representing the highest level of pottery making in the world at that time. The thinnest parts of the shiny cup are only 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters thick. The cup weighs around 50 grams.
But the technique for making this kind of eggshell cup seemed to have disappeared for a long time, since no one could make a cup of the same quality as the Longshan people did about 4,000 years ago.
It was Min Wei who made a breakthrough. In 1998, he successfully produced an eggshell cup that was equally as exquisite as the original and, in some ways, even better. The cup, also just 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters thick all over its body, weighed only 18 grams.
"I am so happy that the ancient technique can be handed down again," said Min, whose workshop also produces black pottery vases, bottles and other works.
Min's road to success followed a zigzag path.
Min began his experiments on making eggshell cups in 1996, after he established the China Longshan Culture Research Center in his hometown.
At that time, he had just finished an extensive period of study at Shandong College of Art in Jinan, the provincial capital. But he soon found that he had to start from scratch.
"No one knew how to make such a thin, light, shiny and pure black cup, or where and how to get suitable clay and how high the firing temperature should be," Min said.
The temperature was the hardest part to conquer, he said. "If the temperature was too high, the color would turn red, if too low, the pottery became mottled black and red. The pure black seemed unreachable."
Min never lost his confidence, even after failing hundreds of times to achieve the desired effect.
"My ancestors here had once done it using the local clay. I believed I could make it sooner or later," he said.
The autumn of 1998 was a fruitful and lucky season for Min. The first real eggshell black pottery cup was made in his kiln.
Careful comparison of the shape, proportions and luster convinced Min that his cup -- 22 centimeters high and weighing 18 grams -- looked much more beautiful and exquisite than the original.
Eggshell cups are extremely expensive, so there is little market demand for them. Many of Min's friends have tried to persuade him to put more of his energy into other, more profitable varieties of black pottery but Min has refused.
"I did it only to save and promote an ancient technique, not for money," he said.
(China Daily July 1, 2003)
