[Photo from zhiyou.co]

The Center was founded in January 2007, with a culture and arts exhibition hall, an administration office, and a product R&D facility for three-color glazed pottery, ancient painted pottery, film culture, cultural exchanges and the cultivation of artists, and shopping for tourists.

The exhibition hall covers a 400-sq-m area with a Tang Dynasty style and is intended for tourism, culture and art products. The administration is responsible for general management and covers a more than 350-sq–m area.

The product R&D facility is the responsibility of the Luoyang Jiuchao Cultural Relic Replica Co, which was founded in 1999, for studying and producing relic replicas. It is authorized by the Henan government to produce tourism products, especially for export, with its products sold in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao, across Southeast Asia, and in Europe and the US. Tangbaozhai has professional team of managers, designers, interpreters and marketing personnel and intends to promote Chinese culture and the Luoyang cultural industry.

Its founder, Gao Shuiwang, was born in 1958 in the village of Shishane, near the town of Chaoyang, where some tri-colored glazed pottery from the Tang Dynasty was discovered.

Gao himself inherited the glazed pottery technique, which is considered a national relic, and is a pottery master. He founded the Jiuchao Cultural Relic Replica Co and the Tangbaozhai Culture and Arts Co, and is a member of the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society, Chinese Society of Cultural Relics, and the Chinese Folk Literature and Arts Society’s Ceramic Art Committee.

 Gao was named a folk handicraft artist by UNESCO and the Chinese Folk Literature and Arts Society in 1996. Gao Shuiwang studied the work of Gao Liangtian, a folk artist who began repairing glazed pottery from the Tang Dynasty at the beginning of the 20th century and moved on to make replicas of the old glazed pottery and understood the traditional pottery technique that had been lost. The technique can be used to create something similar to a dragonfly’s wings. In June 2008, Gao Yongwang succeeded in making the traditional tri-colored glazed pottery of the Tang Dynasty a national cultural heritage.