The weight we carry isn’t always about the mundane. Sometimes it’s that silent pursuit echoing within—chasing after a childhood we never owned, running toward someone else’s definition of success, grasping for an ideal self that remains forever out of focus.
I. Awakening: Discovering What Was Missing
Summer 2021 brought me to Montessori teacher training. Susan, my mentor, had spent four decades weaving beauty, poetry, and nature into her teaching. Through her, I glimpsed what an educator’s life could hold—rich, full, purposeful. My own education had been different: raised on tests and scores, where hobbies were frivolous luxuries. I’d copied manga without learning to draw, devoured gossip without developing discernment. All that buried creative energy had morphed into something else entirely—a hunger for the very concept of passion itself.
That Christmas, I found myself ping-ponging between ice rink and pottery studio. The first time damp clay met my palms, my breath caught. As steel blades bit into ice, every muscle tightened. These weren’t things to understand intellectually—they demanded full presence, complete surrender to experience.
Ice skating taught my legs a new language of balance and flow. Clay work revealed forgotten intelligence in my fingertips. Different worlds, same lesson: embracing awkwardness takes real courage. Looking back, I’m thankful for that younger version of myself who dared to stumble forward.
II. Collapse: When the Pottery Wheel Taught Me the “Required Course of Losing Control”
Spring 2022 was particularly long. At the LexArts pottery studio, my thumb swelled from continuous pressure, and the spinning wheel made me dizzy. Clay always stuck to my hands, impossible to clean properly; I couldn’t master the trick of “centering,” could only let the clay spin out of control; with the slightest distraction or imbalanced force, the clay would instantly collapse.
Back then, I didn’t understand the meaning of “letting go.” Every failure made me desperately want to salvage it, only wasting more material. Failed clay, riddled with air bubbles, couldn’t be reused. Piece after piece was discarded, and I still couldn’t pull a decent straight-sided cup.
Later I learned: with enough strength and stability, even “bad clay” could be reborn. But I was too anxious then, too obsessed.
I gradually realized that learning ceramics is repetitive and spiraling upward: there are bottlenecks and setbacks. Sometimes thinking I’d mastered a technique, the “feel” would suddenly disappear days later, as if returning to square one. Many times, I almost gave up this newly ignited interest.
In early summer 2022, I fell into an obsession with “perfect technique.” Clay always scattered under centrifugal force—the more I tried to control it, the more it went out of control. Life then was as chaotic as the pottery wheel: parenting anxiety, self-doubt. I stubbornly tried to save every failed lump of clay until they dried and crumbled, just like those years when I was obsessed with “having to be perfect.”
III. Two Turning Points: Jingdezhen and Judith
First Turning Point: The Call of Jingdezhen
During the two-week spring break, I finally had time to think: was it a problem with my learning method, or were limitations in expression preventing my breakthrough? Especially in the pottery studio, where teachers couldn’t directly demonstrate muscle movements, many techniques required self-exploration.
At my most frustrated moment, I saw an advertisement for Jingdezhen. The name “Big Tree and Anna” reminded me of my husband’s woodworking shop—one growing upward, one rooting downward.
On my first visit to Jingdezhen, I was “radical”: desperately throwing pots, craving quick success. I tried painting on cups but paid little attention to vessel design, even buying greenware to process others’ half-finished products. To “catch up,” I operated like a factory assembly line.
Until my mother brought the children to see me. Two little ones squatting in the corner playing with clay, their hands covered in clay, pure laughter, overlapping with the silhouette of the old master who kneaded clay day after day. In that moment I suddenly understood: true craftsmanship isn’t about quick technique acquisition, but patient dialogue with materials.
This is precisely Montessori’s educational philosophy: children need a “prepared environment,” not controlled processes. Bottleneck periods are like “sensitive periods”—seemingly regressing, but actually accumulating energy for reorganization.
Second Turning Point: Meeting Judith
After returning to America, I met pottery teacher Judith. I had just finished learning wheel throwing and began trying hand-building, wanting to make practical items in my spare time and decorate my home. Initially, I still habitually imitated: making ornaments for Christmas, painting zodiac animals for New Year, even drawing Pokémon on candle holders. But gradually, more people knew I made pottery, and friends came asking for gifts. I began working day and night: preparing Christmas, New Year, end-of-term gifts, exhausted and hollow, joy gone, technique stagnant.
Until I began seriously reading Judith’s weekly emails. She introduced different artists’ creative philosophies and constantly reminded us to think: “Where does inspiration come from?” I began visiting museums, reading history, shifting from form to content, from copying to creating.
After studying with her for a full year, I set off again, returning to Jingdezhen.
IV. Integration: Life Metaphors from Sludge to Clay
Summer 2024, second time in Jingdezhen.
This time, I truly began “wedging clay.” No longer rushing for results, no longer obsessed with how many pieces I could throw. Instead, in a relaxed state, I threw a cylinder over 20 centimeters tall—something I once wouldn’t have dared imagine.
Jingdezhen’s summer was continuously rainy, hot and humid during the day, so I chose to go to the pottery studio at night. In the empty night, the moment my hands entered the clay, I seemed to return to my university days and re-examine my original major—environmental engineering. In sophomore year, I took a wastewater treatment course studying activated sludge methods, and the teacher even brought real “activated sludge” for us to observe; my senior thesis was on microbial treatment of oil pollution, extracting key bacterial colonies from sludge for purification systems. The pottery wheel’s rumble pulled me back from memory to reality, back to the Jingdezhen studio—my hands had always been dealing with mud, just appearing in another form.
With patient practice, even waste clay could be reborn. I had neglected the most basic “wedging,” only thinking about output, not leaving time to settle my mind. Before mastering strength, one must first understand clay’s nature: not every lump of clay must become a work; too dry or wet, too fast or slow won’t work. True control comes from moderate guidance and going with the flow—brute force can’t shape ideal forms.
Those failed greenware, exploded bisque firings, tilted cups, uneven glazes, all repeatedly reminded me: growth is never a straight track, but circles of rotation, continuously layered pottery wheel trajectories. When I finally learned to sense the thickness of clay with my fingertips, I also began learning to listen to the ups and downs within.
V. Arrival: Making Peace with Myself
I’m not a true “ceramic artist,” nor is my technique refined. But ceramics gave me something more precious: teaching me to appreciate the process, not just obsess over results.
It taught me: interests don’t need to be “qualified” to possess—thirty, forty, fifty years old, any time is fine to start anew.
It reminded me: creation isn’t competition but exploration—if wheel throwing doesn’t work, try hand-building; if technique is lacking, start from clay’s nature.
It made me understand: seemingly unrelated experiences eventually connect—like sludge observation and parenting experience, now all becoming nutrients for my clay work.
The scents of sawdust and clay interweave in our lives. Children hammer away in the woodshop one moment, chase after me asking “Mom, can we play with clay today?” the next. In such moments, I always want time to stop—my husband focused on planing wood, me quietly pinching clay, children freely shuttling between wood and clay.
Wood and clay speak similar truths: oak sands along the grain, clay shapes according to moisture. Like raising children—both reading their nature and gently guiding at appropriate moments. When sunlight passes through sawdust onto unfired pottery, I suddenly understand: the best education is hidden in these natural daily moments.
Now, I still sometimes make crooked cups and cracked plates, but I no longer anxiously “chase anyone.” Because what ceramics taught me was never how to become a “ceramic artist,” but how to find my own rhythm in clay.