[Photo/Xinhua]

When he was in high school in the 1970s, You found a part-time job loading and transporting kaolin for a mine, but he didn't know the white clay was an important raw material for ceramics at the time.

You once saw a batch of earthenware at a local ceramics plant and became interested in a particular drinking vessel.

"It was decorated with the story of the Monkey King," You recalls. He begged the craftsman to make one for him but instead received a scolding.

"He said all the items would be exported and not even the waste products were allowed to be taken out of the plant," says You.

The episode left him more determined to produce porcelain by himself so that ordinary families could have access to them.

In 1978, he bought his first tractor for his transportation business. A non-local ceramics plant had hired him to deliver kaolin to a train station. It was then that he realized just how precious the white clay was.