I thought it might be interesting to take a stroll down a side street of Jingdezhen (Ching-te-Chen), the porcelain city (center) in China. The link below gives a preview. It doesn't matter if your browser can't display Chinese fonts, it's the images you want to see.  Remember, this is just one side street to the city.

You will see thousands of porcelains offered for sale.  These are the same pieces that are now flooding e`Bay, making their way to all parts of the world.  We've all seen them, seller is from China, only 99 cents, 268 dollars shipping, private auction, huge letters and giant images scrolling down the screen which takes forever to load. Aside from authentic looking whole pieces, they also manufacture shards, looking as if they were products from an excavation. There is no limit to the market of the faker.

It's actually sad when you think of it.  It's just poor people trying make a living to support their families. They are very talented and work very hard to produce such beautiful products.  Their main customers are a little better off, further up the ladder. They have computers and schooling enough to sell them to the rest of the world. To the delight of unsuspecting buyers. To the delight of e`Bay as well.

JP

http://www.xuancaoyuan.com/WenZhang/YuanChuang/Yuan/2005Fang/index.html

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