Pale Pink Porcelain[1]
By Frank Owen
Tsang Kee Foo was an artist in porcelain. His house in Kingteh-chen, the porcelain capital of China, was filled with exquisite specimens of porcelain art that no museum could surpass. The family of Tsang Kee Foo had all been potters dating back for almost a thousand years. Somewhere a book is written on the lineage of this renowned artist, though trace of it has been lost. Perhaps some day it will be located and much data about this ancient family will be given to the world.
Tsang Kee Foo was tall and slim and round-shouldered from constantly stooping over his wheel. His face, colorless and bleached, looked as though it had been dried by the furnaces that baked his delicate porcelains. He was superbly well-educated, a profound linguist and efficient in all the supreme literatures of the world. One of his ambitions was to translate the musings of Long Chik, the poet, into pottery. For each quatrain a vase, an urn or a traced-bowl. He believed in the possibility of his desire, since all arts are interchangeable. It was his knowledge of quaint tales and folklore that gave Tsang Kee Foo his charming personality. What mattered that he was cold and ruthless, that he could pass starving children on the streets without so much as a glance, or that he permitted his own sister to die of want simply because once in her youth she had criticized his handiwork?
The face of Tsang Kee Foo was a mask, and few there were who knew the mind behind it. He was successful, rich, an artist. It was enough.
Now as he sat at the door of his house he felt great contentment. He was snatching a moment's rest for his family from the ceaseless toil that had gone on for almost a thousand years. Listlessly he watched the coolies trotting past laden down with porcelain-ware which they were taking to the furnaces to be baked. Not many factories in Kingtehchen could boast furnaces, for most of the pottery was made in the homes of the people. Almost every house was a factory, and even tiny children were skilled in the ceramic art. But Tsang Kee Foo was rich. He had his own furnaces for baking. Life was very good.
- ↑ From "The Wind that Tramps the World and Other Stories." Copyright 1929 by the Lantern Press, Inc.
