In 1999, the porcelain was featured in her book, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, with a portrait of her, her mother and her grandmother on the cover with Lunar New Year’s eve dishes on the table.
Even though Young’s parents cherished the porcelain for decades, they didn’t know where the pieces were made, only that they were a wedding gift from Young’s paternal grandparents in 1950.
“I never knew the name of this pattern. My mother didn’t know the name of the pattern, we just called them our fancy dishes that came out; we didn’t even call them a name,” recalls Young.
Canton porcelain painting workshop breathes life into dying art form
“It was just every year, for Chinese New Year, my parents would pull out these dishes that were tucked away in an upper cabinet in the kitchen, and set the table and it was always really elegant and just spectacular.”
That special porcelain, which Young’s parents began using in 1950, was taken out annually until 2009, the year Young’s father died, after which it was never used again. Her mother died nine years later.
“Even before I flew home, I knew what we were going to do with this china, and I knew it needed to go to an important place and that it was impractical for me to bring it back to my home,” Young says. “I live in New York City and it’s a huge set.”
She contacted a curator she knew at the Smithsonian museum in Washington and he agreed to take some of the china, including at least one place setting and several large platters.
Young finally found out more about the origins of her family’s china after asking Mei Lum, the fifth-generation owner of Wing On Wo & Co, the oldest shop in New York’s Chinatown. Mei Lum told Young it was probably from Yuet Tung China Works, the last factory making hand-painted china in Hong Kong.
Indeed, the third-generation owner of Yuet Tung China Works, Joseph Tso Chi-hung, 72, recognised the style of Young’s china.
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Hong Kong’s first and last hand-painted porcelain factory
Hong Kong’s first and last hand-painted porcelain factory
The pattern, Tso says, is from the late Qing dynasty and is called Canton Rose, because originally it was painted in Canton, now Guangzhou, which at the time was the only Chinese city exporting the china. The porcelain was made and glazed in Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province and then hand-painted and fired again in Canton before being shipped to Europe and the United States.
Also known as guangcai, the porcelain was painted with brilliant colours and the gold glaze was used to imitate the settings used in the Qing royal court.
“Locals or Chinese on the mainland didn’t know about guangcai because it was only made for export,” Tso says. “Many places overseas, like museums or families have it, so few local families have this kind of china.”
Tso’s grandfather, Tsao Lui-chung, with his partner Tan Jinfang, started the first porcelain factory in Hong Kong in 1928. Called Kam Wah Loong, the factory specialised in this type of porcelain painting.
The demand for guangcai ware from Chinese immigrants and overseas customers in the US meant Kam Wah Loong expanded, from employing 30 artisans to 300 in 1938, and the partners also ran a factory in Shanghai from 1937 until 1941 when the Pacific War erupted.
In 1947, co-founders Tsao and Tan parted ways and Tsao gave the Kam Wah Loong factory a new name: Yuet Tung China Works. The factory moved several times in Kowloon, including to a large complex in Kowloon Tong that had a kiln and dormitories for the artisans.
Around the same time, Young’s mother was working as a China National Aviation Corporation stewardess, and one of her routes was flying from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Young says her parents met in San Francisco in 1947, and on one of their dates, he took her to Hollywood where they took a picture with legendary comedians Lucille Ball and Bob Hope.
Then came the Communist revolution in China. “My mother flew [to San Francisco] in October 1949 and, you know, that’s a very important date,” says Young. “There were six airline stewardesses. And when the plane landed, I guess the news came out about what was happening in China.
“So when the plane turned around to fly back to China, every stewardess had to make their decision whether to get back on the plane. When the plane went back, it would never come out again. Three airline stewardesses went back and three stayed, including my mother. So my mother got married to my father, unexpectedly, and cabled the news back to my grandmother in Hong Kong.”
Young’s grandmother had moved from Shanghai to Hong Kong in the late 1940s. When she received the news that her eldest daughter was getting married, she bought a dinner set for 12 people (145 pieces) made by Yuet Tung China Works and had it shipped to San Francisco.
Each piece of the Young family china has a stamp on the back that either says “Made in China” or “China”, and Tso’s 96-year-old father identified them as coming from the Shanghai factory. The Tsos surmise the Young’s guangcai Canton Rose pieces were shipped from Shanghai to Hong Kong before the Shanghai factory closed in 1941.
“Guangcai is famous for its floral designs, in particular Canton Rose,” says the younger Tso.
“The glazes painted on guangcai are thinner than typical glazes so they are more colourful,” he continues, adding the extra layers create texture as well. “We used to use a lot of gold too – 24k gold powder, and afterwards we switched to gold paint.”
When Yuet Tung China Works started, the artisans each specialised in painting a particular thing, like a fish or a chicken, Tso explains. But when his father took over the business in the mid-1960s he thought the best way to speed up production was to create a stamped outline of the design which could be printed on the porcelain so fewer artisans were needed.
Today there are only a handful of artisans painting at Yuet Tung China Works in Kowloon Bay. “Now they are over 80 years old. Some retire and then come back because they are bored,” Tso says.
Despite the decline in interest in the craft, Tso is pleased to see more locals interested in guangcai and visiting to learn more about it or even try to paint on the porcelain for fun.
“During my grandfather’s time, all the pieces were hand-painted and so each piece is different,” he says. “You can feel the paint and the painting isn’t quite precise. But people like this now.”
When Young wrote on social media that her parents’ china was going to the Smithsonian, her post received more likes and comments than anything she had ever posted about Chinese cooking or New York’s Chinatown.
She believes her parents would be proud to know their prized china is in the museum, and that it will continue to be appreciated by others for decades to come.
“When my mother got married in 1949, I think my grandparents wanted to make sure that she had a nice present,” says Young. “It’s a beautiful sentiment and it meant the world to my mother and father. They did treasure this set and it was really something so special for all of us.”
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