He traveled hundreds of miles to visit the plant so that he could find out how the clay was turned into pottery. At the plant, he was gifted three boxes of tiles decorated with the Temple of Heaven, a tourist attraction in Beijing.

"I fastened them to the stove one by one, wiping them from time to time," he says.

After he had made enough money from his logistics business, You spent three years collecting documents, visiting museums and learning from pottery masters at kilns before establishing his ceramics studio in 2013.

A whiteware figurine and tricolored horse were among the first items he reproduced. Once they were completed, he took them to Sun Xinmin, then head of the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology.

"It's a big progress to have someone engaged in passing on the Gongxian kiln tradition, no matter if the works are good or bad," You remembers being told, saying the words greatly inspired him.

To date, You has fired more than 100 ancient earthenware replicas, and his studio has expanded from five employees to more than 20.

You's wife finds it difficult to support him as his studio, having cost him more than 10 million yuan ($1.5 million), has not been profitable.

"I just want to reproduce more works that resemble the ancient styles and have more people discover the beauty and wisdom of our ancestors," he says.