Museum of Kiln Cluster in Wuxi City

(Voiceover)

00:03 Wuxi is a historical city on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. The long history of the city created a memorable culture and also left a lot of landmarks. Located on the Dayao Lu in the historical block of the Qingming Bridge in Wuxi City, the Museum of Kiln Cluster is one of the cities’ many treasured pearls. 

00:33 This museum in Jiangnan was an important manufacturing and trading base for bricks and roof tiles during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Now, the Wuxi Museum of Kiln Cluster group is still silently recounting the popular “brick-tile culture” beside the canal. China is the birthplace of sintering bricks. During the neolithic period, the Chinese invented the world’s first piece of baked brick in the Yangtze River Basin. Traditional Chinese architecture has played the biggest part in the brick art. The distinctive designs of up-curved eave corners and brick carvings featuring strong Chinese cultural elements offer unique perspectives of Chinese civilization. 

01:28 The Construction Kiln has a thousand years of history in Wuxi. The city has become an important brick origin in Jiangnan. Because Wuxi is along the Grand Canal, with very convenient water transportation, brick and tile manufacturing has thrived here. 

01:46 With a total area of about 3,000 square meters, the exhibition hall of Wuxi Museum has a similar exterior expression as that of the local dwellings along the canal-side of the Qingming Bridge. Out front of its entrance, there is a freshly built water wharf with stone balustrades, quaint and simple in design, flanked by a small bridge, flowing water, and homes on two sides styled like Jiangnan’s local dwellings. 

02:17 Wuxi Museum of Kiln Cluster preserves several ancient kilns of the Ming and Qing dynasties. These ancient kilns, built along the canal, have a long history, silently recounting the past ebb and flow of Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal to visitors of the museum.