A purple-sand pottery displayed at the 9th Yixing International Ceramic Culture and Arts Festival & the Belt and Road Initiative National-Gift Purple-Sand Pottery Arts Exhibition Tour[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

The 9th Yixing International Ceramic Culture and Arts Festival & the Belt and Road Initiative National-Gift Purple-Sand Pottery Arts Exhibition Tour were launched together in Beijing on Aug 18.

Altogether, 24 purple-sand tea pots that were presented as State gifts were showcased at the Kempinski Hotel by the Yanqi Lake.

According to the event organizer, the pieces were works by the Jiangsu-based Ziyujinsha Tea Art Co and artists or scholars from the Art School of Tsinghua University, Peking University, and other institutions around China.

They were either given to foreign heads of state, such as former British prime minister Tony Blair, the United Nations, or used at important State occasions.

As part of the Belt and Road Initiative and to promote traditional Chinese culture, Yixing in Jiangsu province, which is often celebrated as the "capital of ceramics" in China, has organized exhibitions of its purple-sand pottery both in China and abroad since 2016.

In April 2016, purple-sand pottery was exhibited at the British Museum in London.

The exhibition will move to cities such as Linyi in Shandong and Dongguan in Guangdong province, before being taken abroad to Hungary, the Czech Republic and Italy.