大众网记者 王彬 王昱蓉 威海报道

In Weihai, a coastal city in eastern China, there exists a type of pottery known as "Laowuhuo." It bears no glaze, flaunts no colors—just raw, native alluvial clay, shaped entirely by hand. The kiln fires that first lit up over two thousand years ago still burn today.

Xu Anming grew up in the potteries, watching his uncles and elder brothers throw clay and fire the kilns. After retiring, he set aside everything else and threw himself back into the mud—and has labored at it for more than a decade. He has trekked across dozens of mountains in search of the right clay, and run hundreds of experiments. From mining the earth to firing the finished pieces, the process involves fourteen major steps and over a hundred minor ones—a single misstep at any stage, and all is lost.

Today, this craft has been inscribed as a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage. For Xu Anming, passing down this old artistry means far more than preserving an object or a memory. It means safeguarding the very essence of the Chinese character—a reverence for materials, a gratitude toward nature, and a quiet, unyielding resilience. His hope is that more people will come to know that in this handful of earth and this tongue of flame, what is fired is not just pottery, but the daily rhythms of life—and what is passed on is nothing less than a people's roots.