Day 14
I decided to go to MaoKong and take the gondola up the park. It was sunny today and very hot. I went to a Guan Yin temple and a tea pot museum. I was trying to go to the tea museum but I took the wrong shuttle bus in the park. But nothing is an accident, it turned out to be the right direction and the right museum for me.
In the tiny museum I was given a tour on the clays used for tea pots and I learned there are four major YiXin clays used. The purple sand one is the first layer the one closest to air, then so on and so forth. I was told the purple sand from the 80’s was used mostly for space craft and space shuttles due to the unique mineral components. So it is difficult to locate real purple sand tea pots unless it was made from time before 80’s.
This photo is a picture on tools used to make YiXing Pots.
Here are photos of beautiful tea pots with amazing details that can only be well appreciated with good eyes or magnification lense.
Then the tour guide and I got onto a conversation about blanket cotton stuffing. I asked her why there isn’t anymore of those heavy thick 100 percent raw cotton blankets anymore. We went back and forth about the weight. It’s so heavy that you feel secure in it because you can feel it’s weight. Plus it is warm. But because it is so heavy some people feel like they can’t breathe that the blanket is choking them. I told her I am very old school because I still remember those blankets.
