The long reign of Wan Li, the last important period of the Ming dynasty, is certainly the best represented in European collections, a circumstance due to the ceramic activity of the time not less than to its nearness to our own age. In the first year of the reign orders were given that one of the sub-prefects of Jao-chou Fu should be permanently stationed at Ching-tê Chên to supervise the Imperial factory. It appears that he proved a stern taskmaster, and at the same time that the potters were severely burdened by excessive demands from the palace. The picture drawn by the censor in the previous reign of the afflicted condition of the potters, and the story told elsewhere[146] how they had made intercession daily in the temple of the god that the Imperial orders might be merciful, are fitting preface to the tale of the dragon bowls told as follows by T’ang Ying,[147] the director of the factory in the first half of the eighteenth century. “By the west wall of the Ancestral-tablet Hall of the spirit who protects the potters is a dragon fish bowl (_lung kang_). It is three feet in diameter and two feet high, with a fierce frieze of dragons in blue and a wave pattern below. The sides and the mouth are perfect, but the bottom is wanting. It was made in the Wan Li period of the Ming. Previously these fish bowls had presented great difficulty in the making, and had not succeeded, and the superintendent had increased his severity. Thereupon the divine T’ung took pity on his fellow potters, and served them by alone laying down his life. He plunged into the fire, and the bowls came out perfect. This fish bowl was damaged after it had been finished and selected (for palace use), and for a long time it remained abandoned in a corner of the office. But when I saw it I sent a double-yoked cart and men to lift it, and it was brought to the side of the Ancestral-tablet Hall of the god, where it adorns a high platform, and sacrifice is offered. The vessel’s perfect glaze is the god’s fat and blood; the body material is the god’s body and flesh; and the blue of the decoration, with the brilliant lustre of gems, is the essence of the god’s pure spirit.” The deification of T’ung was a simple matter to the Chinese, who habitually worship before the tablets of their ancestors; but he seems to have become the genius of the place, and in this capacity to have superseded another canonised potter named Chao,[148] who had been worshipped at Ching-tê Chên since 1425.