Xinyu is in Jiangxi, in East China.
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Jiangxi · City Guide
Xinyu, Where China's Great Technology Book Was Written.
Overview
Why Go
Song Yingxing wrote his survey of Ming crafts and industry in 1637 while holding a teaching post at Fenyi. It covers everything from rice to iron to paper, with woodblock illustrations, and historians of technology still work from it.
One of the defining Chinese ink painters of the twentieth century was born in Xinyu, and the city keeps a park and memorial to him. His landscapes are in every major Chinese collection.
The story of the girl whose feather robe is taken so she cannot fly home appears in a fourth-century collection of strange tales, set at this lake. It is among the earlier full versions of that story in Chinese.
Xiabu, the summer cloth woven from hand-split ramie fibre, has been made here for centuries and is listed as intangible heritage. It is stiff, cool and almost transparent, and it was what people wore before cotton.
Xinyu was a steel town and is now one of the larger photovoltaic manufacturing bases in China. Two heavy industries in one small city inside two generations.
See
A memorial hall at Fenyi with reproductions of the book's woodblock plates, models of the processes and an account of his life. Small, and it is the reason to come. Ninety minutes.
A reservoir broken into many wooded islands, crossed by boat, with the legend attached to it and a botanical collection on one island. Half a day, and the boat is much of it.
A city park with a memorial to Fu Baoshi and a gallery of reproductions and related work. It is the local green space as much as a museum. An hour.
Workshops splitting ramie by hand and weaving it on wooden looms, with the fibre preparation being the slow part. Several take visitors by arrangement. An hour.
The Fenyi countryside associated with the Ming grand secretary, with stone gateways, old bridges and village halls. A quiet corner with a complicated name attached to it. Two hours.
Forested hills on the county border with walking paths, a temple and the remains of silver workings that appear in the historical record. Half a day.
On the Map
Approximate locations of the attractions above, across Xinyu.
Eat
Firm pressed tofu braised with chilli and preserved vegetable, a fixture of the Jiangxi table. Jiangxi cooking runs hotter and more sour than its neighbours and the tofu carries it well.
Round rice noodles stir-fried with egg, chilli and greens rather than served in soup, eaten at breakfast. The dry-fried version is the local default and it is hotter than visitors expect.
Oil pressed from camellia seed in the surrounding hills, pale and high-smoking, used for everything from frying to dressing. Jiangxi is one of the main producing provinces and the mills sell direct.
Fish from the reservoir, steamed whole with chopped chilli and black beans in the Jiangxi manner. The lakeside restaurants price by the fish and cook it plainly.
Do
The plates show looms, furnaces, mills and boats in working detail. Pick one process and follow it through the illustration; that level of technical drawing in 1637 is the whole point of the book.
The lake reads as a maze of islands from water level and the boat is the sole way to see the shape of it. Sailings are frequent in the warm months and sparse in winter.
The fibre is separated by hand into threads before any weaving starts, and that is where the hours go. Seeing it explains why the cloth was valuable and why almost nobody makes it now.
Forty minutes from Nanchang makes this a half-day detour rather than a trip of its own, which is the realistic way to fit the memorial hall and the lake into a Jiangxi route.
When
Warm, green and before the plum rains at their heaviest, with the lake full. The strongest window of the year.
Hot and very humid, which is the season the summer cloth was made for. The lake and the hills are the cool options.
Dry, mild and clear, the ideal conditions for the islands and the villages. The other good window.
Cool, damp and grey rather than cold. The memorial hall and the workshops carry the trip and there is nobody about.
Explore More
Xinyu is in Jiangxi, in East China.
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