Dai culture: ancient pottery-making technology of Dai people

The pottery-making technology of the Dai nationality is a living fossil of the Dai culture. In modern times, porcelain is processed by machines. In the silent Dai mountainous area, people still use the most primitive and primitive methods to make porcelain. Through the constant changes of history, this traditional craft is still intact in Dai villages. Then, let's take a look at the Dai culture: the ancient pottery-making process of the Dai people.

Dai people like to use pottery since ancient times. According to the old adage of "Hundred Arts Biography" in Ming Dynasty, wearing utensils "uses a lot of pottery". Many Dai villages in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province still retain ancient pottery-making techniques. Dai pottery is made by women, and its technological characteristics are slow manual production. Archaeologists and ethnologists at home and abroad believe that the pottery-making of the Dai nationality completely preserves the ancient pottery-making technology and is the representative of the original pottery in China. Dai pottery is widely used in daily production, life and Buddhist activities.

Pottery tools are generally composed of wooden pottery bats, pebbles, bamboo chips, wooden boards, wooden hammers, small dustpans, etc., with different patterns, and the raw materials are clay rich in various places. Generally, it is necessary to go through several procedures, such as earth borrowing, soil drying, soil screening, Gaza mud mixing, turntable loading, blank making, cooling and drying, and firing. The main varieties are pots, cans, retort, pots and so on. Among them, clay pots are the most famous.

The food cooked in the casserole made by traditional pottery method is easy to cook and delicious, and the water is cool and refreshing. Decoction can maintain the best medicinal properties and is deeply loved by local people. Dai pottery is made by women. In order to keep the technical secret, some places still follow the custom that pottery-making skills are not passed on to their children, but only to their daughters-in-law.

Pot-making, called "board mill" in Dai language, commonly known as "earthen pot", mainly produces various household appliances, building materials and Buddha carving supplies. The craft is characterized by hand-made slow wheels with carved wood grains printed on the surfaces, which are very similar to Neolithic pottery unearthed in the south. The materials are all made of clay and sand, and there are many methods, such as baking in the open air, closing and semi-baking, etc. The embryo forming methods are diversified, such as whether there is a wheel to make an embryo, whether the toes turn the slow wheel, whether to turn the wheel by hand, etc. These technological processes fully prove that the pottery-making technology of the Dai nationality completely preserves the ancient pottery-making technology.

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