# Purple Sand ## Sound Xi Shang 1 > | Wu Hufan Jiang Hanting Tang Yun ## Transmitting the Way and Teaching the Craft: Mentors and Friends At the dawn of the establishment of New China, all industries awaited revival. At that time, the ceramics industry in Yixing's Dingshu was dominated by small and medium-sized workshops, with fewer than one hundred practitioners remaining in the zisha (purple sand) craft, and the number of veteran artisans who made teapots could be counted on one's fingers. In early 1950, the prices of Yixing ceramics fluctuated dramatically. To stabilize the market and develop production, in April, Dingshu established the "Yixing Ceramics Production and Sales Joint Business Office" (abbreviated as "Taolian Office"), organizing workshops for joint production and sales. "At that time, 598 workshops participated in the Taolian Office, with working capital of 127,870 yuan, divided into 3,681 shares."[1] Subsequently, joint business offices were established for three industries—Xi (altar-type vessels), He Sand (basin-type vessels), and Zisha—as well as the "Yixing Pottery Goods Agency Office." In the spring of 1951, the people became masters of their own destiny, and the status of the working class was elevated. Influenced by New China's socialist mass production and the supremacy of the working class, Gu Jingzhou left Yixing and went to Shanghai to work at a factory originally established by Germans. --- [1] Chen Jianming, ed., *Dingshu Town Gazetteer* (Beijing: China Books Publishing House, September 1992 edition), p. 198.