Dragon Kiln: A Literary Phenomenon

Puzi published his novel “Dragon Kiln” in 2009. The serious novel has made a stir among critics. Literary reviews in influential media such as People’s Daily， Guangming Daily， China Youth News， Art News， and Literature News gushed enthusiastically about this novel， saying that the book creates poetic nostalgia for a village and land in the depth of time.

The novel wows readers too. Eight thousand copies of the first printing were immediately snatched up by booksellers at 22nd Beijing Books Sales Expo. The second printing was 40，000. It caused a big stir among booksellers again at the 2010 Springtime National Books Sales Expo.

Xie Buzhou， editor of the second print and executive vice chairman of Hunan Arts Publishing House， observes that few unheard-of writers have sold a serious novel so well in recent years. The reprint decision came only naturally after the first edition went off with a big bang on the book market.

Puzi is a government official in Ninghai， a county in Ningbo， a port city and a central urban center in eastern Zhejiang Province. He spent six years writing and rewriting the novel and before that， he had spent about twenty years on and off writing in his spare time.

“Dragon Kiln” unfolds a story about a man and his pottery-making experience at a village in the last fifty years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). A man with no memory of the past comes to a village. A skillful potter， he brings pottery making technology and new ideas about commodity， trade， market. What he does brings big changes to the village. Though the story is set in the Qing Dynasty， Puzi says it is a Chinese parable designed to point to the existence of facts.

The village in the novel in many ways resembles the village where Puzi was born and brought up. His home village is situated at the foot of a mountain and faces the sea. As the landlocked village had difficulty accessing the outside world， the villagers speak a dialect with a lot of ancient elements. It retains many ancient words and phrases; many pronunciations haven’t changed for thousands of years. The village was also home to the first folk troupe of Pingdiao， an opera genre native to Ninghai.

The author’s home village resembles many ancient villages across China. Some big families have ruled for hundreds or even thousands of years. They are decision makers and have the final say in all big issues of the village. Though the traditional rule was nominally broken from 1949 onward， tribal leaders and families are still a strong force in village politics and other social affairs.

Pottery making used to be a major economic pillar in the author’s home village. Some New Stone-Age pottery ruins were unearthed around village. All these are vividly portrayed as a background in “Dragon Kiln”.

The inspiration of the novel came when he was visiting the Forbidden City in Beijing. He saw a bronze Dragon Urn at the palace. The decorative water container was actually a fire control device. While admiring the urn， Puzi wondered whether the dragon urn was a tribute and whether the dragon kiln at his home village could make pottery urns good enough to be tributes for royal houses.

On March 24， 2001， he started constructing his storyline. On February 10， 2005 he began to write it out in full and on March 17， 2007 he put the last period mark to his manuscript. He compared himself to a literary pottery working at his dragon kiln for about six years. The result is a novel of about 200，000 words.

After signing a publishing contract， he was so happy that he jotted down a short but highly poetic paragraph in his dairy describing the sunshine on the road， birds’ chirping and rhododendrons in furious bloom outside his apartment. After the publication of the novel， Puzi made a special trip to the Forbidden City in Beijing and revisited the bronze dragon urn expressing his silent gratitude for the inspiration.

Critics and fellow writers like this novel for various reasons. Li Jingze， editor-in-chief of People’s Literature and renowned literary critic， says that Puzi adds glory to his home village. After making comparisons， Li comments that Puzi’s village is not as otherworldly as Macondo in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”， not as depressing and broken as Yoknapatawpha County that came out of imagination of Faulkner， and not as devastated by outside forces as Northeast Town， an imaginary rural place dreamed up by Mo Yan， a celebrated modern Chinese writer. Li Jingze observes that the villagers act like gods and readers will surely remember them and talk about them as if they were gods.

Hu Zhijun， a guest researcher with Zhejiang Academy of Literature， says it is worth pointing out that the characters in the novel are definitely not created in the mold of realism， an orthodox literary style favored over a long time in China. He remarks the people in the novel reside in a world which is both real and unreal.

Lei Da， a prominent literary critic， notes that through his weird imagination， Puzi tries to seek a primitive energy unfamiliar to the modern people.

Some reviewers say that the author opens a world with various meanings in his refined narration and imaginative text. On the one side， readers see the village and its people. On the other， readers encounter the history， humiliation and renovation of an ancient nation.□