A staff member cleans in the imperial porcelain factory site in Jingdezhen city in eastern Chinese Jiangxi province on Oct. 18, 2007. The historic site opens to the public on the same day. (Photo: cnsphoto)

The remains of the world-famous imperial porcelain factory in Jingdezhen city of eastern Chinese Jiangxi Province opened to the public on Thursday after two years of preparation work.

The historic site has been sleeping quietly underground in the suburb of Jingdezhen for hundreds of years, before it was unearthed in 1982 by a scholar on ancient ceramics. Large-scale excavation began in 2002, and the construction of a protective house over the site was started in 2005. Now the site has become a museum.

Besides, ancient porcelain workshops, docks, temples, alleys and houses in the city have undergone repair to give a whole picture of the ancient "capital of ceramics."

Jingdezhen has a long history of porcelain making, and produced porcelain wares for imperial use for hundreds of years. The factory was founded in 1369, soon after the Ming Dynasty commenced in 1368.

Since then, the fire in the factory's furnace didn't go out until the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in the early 1910s.

In recent years thousands of precious ancient porcelain wares have been unearthed in Jingdezhen, making the city a living fossil of Chinese feudal history.

(CRI.cn October 19, 2007)