Calle de Caolín

Kaolin gives this short street in Delicias its name: a very pure white clay, light and greasy, that water will not dissolve and fire hardens. Fine porcelain comes from it, and it also goes into paper pulp, cosmetics and stomach remedies. Anyone holding a translucent plate up to the light is holding fired kaolin. The name travels from far away. It recalls Kao-ling, a hill in southeastern China whose name means “high ridge,” where this earth was dug for the imperial kilns. A Jesuit missionary sent the first samples to Europe in the early eighteenth century, and so a Chinese slope ended up as a street sign in Arganzuela, a district that grew up around the railway and the factories of the nineteenth century.