Families fired up about ceramics

Jingdezhen's porcelain culture inheritor Sun Lixin at his workshop. Like most, Sun Lixin, the eldest child in the family-run businesses in Jingdezhen, east China's Jiangxi province, was born with a mission — succession. His father, Sun Tongxin, has a masterly skill for blue and white painting on porcelain and was a trailblazer in splash ink painting on ceramic panels, blending the innovative contemporary high-temperature technique with the expressive methods of traditional Chinese blue and white ink painting. "Though being wet behind the ears, I was thrilled to be an apprentice in a state-owned factory," Sun Lixin said. "I was always sniveling as my father bawled me out for doing things frolicsome with other children," Sun Lixin said.