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“You spend all day playing with mud dolls instead of studying—do you think you’ll make a living out of them?” his mother snapped, furious to see the stove crammed with Tseng Ming-nan’s clay sculptures while she hurried to cook. Her angry words proved prophetic: after trying many jobs, Tseng finally devoted his life to pottery. Wang-an, Penghu, is famed for its stone weirs and rare green sea-turtles. From Tiantai Hill one surveys an indigo coastline; at sunset, golden light spills across Huachai village, paving a broad path to the horizon so dazzling you long to sprint along it into the dying sun. That is the island’s beauty to a visitor. To Tseng, born there, it felt like fate: women farmed, men fished—an inherited destiny. Primary-school children must leave for Magong, exiled at seven. Many, homesick, drop out; Tseng quit in third grade and herded cattle, fished with his father, or helped his mother in the fields. At twelve he sailed with her to Kaohsiung and saw electricity for the first time. “I counted the streetlights like moons; cars, trains, wide roads, huge ships—I felt I’d landed on the moon!” Fifty years on, the memory still excites him. Knowing another world existed, he abandoned herding; only study could break fate. He loved art class and longed for fine-arts college, but failed the exam, entered Army Logistics School, and after discharge finally enrolled in the new night division of what is now Taiwan University of Arts. A decade later he earned an MA in the U.K. Aware that rivaling ancient masters was near impossible, Tseng began with deep research into Chinese ceramics, starting from Han-Tang wares and mining rare variants. Years and savings later he invented a brilliant iron-red glaze, forging a signature style. Su Dongpo once praised iron-red as “Dingzhou porcelains carved into red jade.” Tseng’s Iron-Red Jar layers scarlet into pale yellow and white;草书 flows across the white crackled like cicada wings, merging classic and modern. Trace of Time uses glaze and kiln heat to mimic corroded patina, speaking of age. Lady translates cursive lines into clay: a downcast maiden, shy and slender, distilled to essential curves, breathing Zen stillness. Han-Tang pottery is “thick yet supple.” His Sapphire-Glaze Vessel revives that robust archaic aura; stable cobalt rises into rust-red and sapphire blooms, crystalline patterns sparkling like jewels. Science, craft, art—pottery’s trinity. Glaze recipes can be calculated, but kiln temperature, firing time, oxygen, CO₂, glaze thickness must all be balanced. In Chicken, iron-red crowns the head, celadon cloaks the back like white jade, the belly shows raw clay. One piece, three textures, three tones—technical bravura. “Chicken” (koe) sounds like “home” in Taiwanese; boarding school taught him family’s worth. “Family ethics are Chinese culture’s core.” As a boy he asked for a dog; Mother replied, “We don’t have food for people, let alone dogs,” so chickens became pets—and recurring motifs. Family Portrait shows cock, hen and three chicks hand-built on rock-textured clay, earthy and warm. In the 1990s Tseng turned to clay panels, using copper as colorant in reduction firings for reds, blues, purples, greens. Figure paints with sapphire glaze in brushstrokes echoing ink-wash; calligraphic lines suggest features, the background blurs like splashed landscape, a violet-and-white face adding mystery. Once, without a compass, he followed only experience and fishermen’s courage across open water. That memory fuels the confidence with which he now hopes his “heaven-sent” pots will one day secure his name in art history.