China’s Eastern Zhejiang Yue Kiln Celadon Museum

China’s Eastern Zhejiang Yue Kiln Celadon Museum

The China’s Eastern Zhejiang Yue Kiln Celadon Museum is located in Yuyao City in eastern Zhejiang Province, situated within a cluster of historic buildings in the city center. It lies to the north by Hangzhou Bay and to the south adjacent to the Siming Mountains, just a stone’s throw away from the “Shunjiang Tower” and the “Tongji Bridge.” Approved by the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture, this private museum houses a collection spanning the Western Zhou Dynasty, Spring and Autumn-Warring States Period, Eastern Han Dynasty, Three Kingdoms, Jin Dynasties, Northern and Southern Dynasties, Sui and Tang Dynasties, Five Dynasties, and Northern Song Dynasty.

The representative kiln site of the Yue Kiln, Shanglin Lake, is located in nearby Cixi City, not far from Yuyao. The Yue Kiln is the founding ancestor of Chinese porcelain kilns and represents the pinnacle of China’s celadon production. It is the most famous ancient celadon kiln system in China. As early as the Eastern Han Dynasty, the earliest Chinese porcelain was successfully fired in the dragon kilns of the Yue Kiln, marking a milestone in human civilization. Over the course of more than a thousand years of production history from the Eastern Han to the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yue Kiln underwent stages of inception, development, peak prosperity, and decline. The two centuries from the mid-Tang to the early Northern Song marked the kiln’s golden age, during which its production scale, craftsmanship, and product quality were among the best of all renowned kilns. Yue celadons were not only presented as tributes to the imperial court and used by common people, making them beloved everyday utensils and prized items frequently offered to royalty, but were also exported to nearly twenty countries and regions in Asia and Africa. The production techniques of the Yue Kiln had a broad and profound influence on numerous kilns across southern and northern China, as well as on the celadon production in the Korean Peninsula and Japan, impacting the world at large.

The China’s Eastern Zhejiang Yue Kiln Celadon Museum is one of the public-interest museums and is open to the public free of charge year-round. More than thirty pieces in its collection meet the national first-class cultural relic standards. Since its opening, the museum has garnered widespread attention and recognition both domestically and internationally, exerting a profound social impact both at home and abroad.

The Eastern Zhejiang Yue Kiln Celadon Museum has hosted a considerable number of authoritative experts, scholars, enthusiasts of Yue celadon from within China, as well as students from Shanghai and South Korea majoring in museology. It has also received museum experts from South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy, along with other international cultural relic enthusiasts who visited out of admiration. A number of highly reputed domestic media outlets have covered the Yue celadon of eastern Zhejiang and its founder, Chen Guozhen, including Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV, Hong Kong Cable TV’s “China Focus” program, as well as newspapers and magazines from Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Ningbo.

Attraction Location

No. 43, North Binjiang Road, Yuyao, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province