[![http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/english/culture/2016-05/12/content_720530.htm][1]][1] Good china is made with kaolin, clay with an ample amount of kaolinite. Wiki's pretty clear that “[kaolin][2]” derives—via 18th-century French Jesuit mangling of _gāolǐngtǔ_ (高嶺土)—from the village of Gaoling in Fuliang County near Jingdezhen in Jiangxi.[¹][3][²][4]* [![kaolin][5]][5] From its first appearance in English in 1727, though, it was paired with a second ingredient variously transcribed as _petunse_,[³][6] _pih-tun-tsze_,[⁴][7] _pai-tun-tsze_,[⁵][8] _petuntse_,[⁶][9] &c. [![w0t][10]][10] Wiki does have an article on that, too,[⁷][11] but it's nonsensically sourced & can't link to a Chinese article or back up its claim that the actual Chinese term is _báidūnzì_ (白墩子).<sup><sup>[citation needed]</sup></sup>† Instead, most English sources just repeat different variations of old _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ articles repeating updated forms of what the Jesuit called the stuff. [![Extraction du Kaolin (left) et du petuntse (right), 19th century French illustration][12]][12] Meanwhile, 白墩子 doesn't appear at all on the actual Chinese Wiki and it only shows up on the shanzhai Chinese wiki as some Mongolian nitrate-laden salt.[⁸][13] The Chinese Wiki article on hard-paste porcelain—the process they used at Jingdezhen—just says it involves _gāolǐngtǔ_ and _chángshí_ (長石).[⁹][14] The Hong Kong Maritime Museum[¹⁰][15] and a handful of other sites do mention the porcelain stone _petunse_ but say it's a transcription of _báidūncí_ (白墩瓷) instead. Under the heading _pĭh tun tsze_, Robert Morrison's 1819 _Dictionary of the Chinese Language_ gives 白墪子 but with a 敢 and 子 in the top half of the central character instead of 敦... and with the note that "the characters are doubtful."[¹¹][16] [![1809 illustration of Petuntse in British Mineralogy, Vol. III][17]][17] I assume the basic chemistry is right and a feldspar-rich stone was used to create Jingdezhen porcelain, but __what is the way Chinese actually historically and presently talks about that stuff?__ & __does anyone have any firm source for what term [François Xavier d'Entrecolles][18] was trying to transcribe?__ ---- <sup><sup>* Although strangely enough, the article on "[Jingdezhen pottery][19]" itself has absolutely no mention of the materials used to create it and seems focused on establishing the exact provenance and chronological order of the pieces in the British Museum collection. Go figure.</sup></sup><br> <sup><sup>† Naturally, the page's [Wikidata entry][20] not only doesn't include any Chinese, it exclusively includes the atonal pinyin romanization _baiduncai_ in its English list. Since that's the __only__ appearance of "white lump vegetable" on the internet, though, it's obviously unintentional vandalism by someone misunderstanding the Jesuit _ts_ as a modern pinyin _c_ and is easy enough to fix. [Done.]</sup></sup> [1]:https://i.sstatic.net/KnSXz46G.png [2]:https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kaolin [3]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaolinite [4]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingdezhen [5]: https://i.sstatic.net/BMcl6Yzu.png [6]:https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/petunse [7]:https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica,_Ninth_Edition/King-tih_Chin [8]:https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/King-t%C3%AA_Ch%C3%AAn [9]:https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-botanic-garden-part-ii/ [10]: https://i.sstatic.net/QStVA1En.png [11]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petuntse [12]: https://i.sstatic.net/F0CoE57V.png [13]:https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%99%BD%E5%A2%A9%E5%AD%90 [14]:https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/硬质瓷 [15]:https://www.hkmaritimemuseum.org/post/china-porcelain-production [16]:https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=tbstS37c_uwC&pg=PA667 [17]: https://i.sstatic.net/TpnQwCWJ.png [18]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Xavier_d'Entrecolles [19]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingdezhen_pottery [20]:https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q7179426&oldid=2180117329