Yao Li Ancient Kiln Site and Waterfall

This past Sunday, some of the Jingdezhen laowais and myself took a day trip to Yao Li.  Though it took some convincing to get me to go, being that Sunday is our one-day off and I still have a pile of clothes to wash, another to fold, an apartment to clean and an empty fridge. I thankfully made the right decision to be less practical and more touristic.  It was another beautifully hot day, a little sunny but mostly overcast which gave me some really great photos.  Glad I’m finally getting some use out of my Nikon other than shooting slides.    The countryside here is truly beautiful, the landscape still makes me think I’m in a movie with some epic soundtrack playing in the background.  The ancient Kiln site is a tourist destination with the usual knick-knack peddlers, entrance fees and some amazing chinglish.   Though we had to pay to get in, being able to spend an afternoon walking through a beautiful landscape of bamboo forests, tea leaf fields, rivers, waterfalls, bridges, mountains and having it almost completely devoid of litter was worth the entry fee. The kiln itself was incredibly long, if my memory stands correct it was 47 meters long (I verge on 2 meters tall).  There are shards and saggars everywhere and you can see the remaining foundations of the workshops.  Unfortunately the map’s description was rather cryptic, one room was the precipitation room; I forget the other names but they were equally vague.  After the Kiln site we made an epic trek up a mountain to see a waterfall.  We easily walked 5 miles that day and that is a conservative estimate.  The path to the waterfall was immaculately kept, paved with stones and often having concrete steps, there was never a time where we had to do any actual climbing, just some seemingly never-ending steep staircases. Sitting at the base of the waterfall, dipping our feet and heads into the pool, was an incredibly relaxing experience especially after a hectic workweek and some serious badminton games.  The Badminton experience is for another time though, Chinese Badminton is no leisurely gentrified  game here, it is intense.  And by the way, Imovie is possibly my new obsession.

Tags: 2010, Ancient Kiln Site, China, Tourist in China, Yao Ii

Posted on Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 8:07 am and is filed under China, Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.