In the 34th year of Guangxu's reign in Guangzhou, the sound of trams on Yonghan Road crushed the morning dew in the Xiguan mansion. Chen Ziqian, the young boss of "Shi Zhen Tang", is using an ancestral file to polish the last gear of the "Nine Dragons into the Clouds" clock. This Guangzhong, which cost 30,000 taels of silver and took three years to build, was his birthday gift to Long Jiguang, the leader of the New Army. It was also the last straw for the Chen family, whose family was in decline.
His father, Chen Bingzhong, was once "the best in the South". His bells could be put into the Summer Palace and were praised by the Queen Mother. But in Chen Ziqian's generation, Western watches came in like a tide. The precision of Swiss pocket watches and the durability of German movements made the gilded signboard of "Shi Zhen Tang" covered with dust. In order to collect the red gold and Dongzhu that Long Jiguang wanted, he pawned his grandfather's sealed work, and even used the "new lubricant" from a British company without telling his father on the sickbed - he thought it was an innovation, but it turned out to be a fatal failure.
On the day of the unveiling, "Kowloon into the Clouds" came to an abrupt halt in front of a packed hall of guests. Long Jiguang's sneer, the creditor's pressure, and the way his sister Chen Zijin hid his mother's relics with red eyes, tightened his nerves like clockwork. He hid in the dusty "Jingsi Studio" and finally read in his great-grandfather's manuscript: the real Guangzhong is never just "accurate", but "living" - hiding the breath of time with the bite of mortise and tenon, and retaining the toughness of time with the stickiness of rosin.
