## Flat Pot (Made by Yang Pengnian / Inscribed by Chen Mansheng) ...and some folk masters like Guo Liang. Due to the drastic changes in modern Chinese society, the Yixing pottery industry was in a state of stagnation and uncertainty. "During the War of Resistance Against Japan, seven Zisha kilns and more than one hundred workshops were successively destroyed, a large number of craftsmen were scattered, and the entire Shushan kiln site produced less than a thousand Zisha teapots throughout the year. After the victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan and before Liberation, due to price fluctuations and sluggish sales, output was only 57.8% of pre-war levels, and the entire Zisha industry was almost left with no successors."[1] Many artisans were forced to abandon their craft and change professions amid the turmoil of social transformation. At this historical low point for the Yixing pottery industry, the remaining group of Zisha artisans shouldered the historical responsibility. They continued the endlessly vital, generation-to-generation transmission of the kiln fire, contributing their modest efforts to the inheritance of the Zisha craft. Gu Jingzhou was an outstanding representative among them. Inspired by the skills of his predecessors, he studied and imitated with his hands and contemplated with his heart, pioneering and innovating. He diligently studied the handed-down works of the great masters before him, absorbing the brilliant civilization left behind by the evolutionary process of Zisha craftsmanship, enriching his own experience, inheriting past excellence, and together with other artisans of his generation, striving courageously forward for the revival and prosperity of the Zisha industry after the founding of New China. --- [1] Chen Jianming, ed., *Dingshu Town Gazetteer* (Beijing: China Books Publishing House, September 1992), p. 229.