Deep in the old street, the Stringsong Teahouse holds a three-stringed instrument that is sixty years old, along with Master Ma's lifelong legacy of traditional Chinese music.
Lin Xiao takes up his master's instrument. He had hoped to stay on the old flagstone street and let the music of the neighborhood keep playing, but instead, he catches the eye of traffic-driven investors.
“A beat-up old instrument like that, and you call it intangible cultural heritage?” Shen Yu spreads rumors with an army of paid trolls, hires people to swap out the instrument, and even conspires with developers to flatten the old street.
But he doesn't know that the old street's treasures are far more than a single three-stringed instrument!
Old Chen from the mortise-and-tenon workshop can craft a national-treasure-grade instrument stand using nothing but wood and joinery. Zhou from the traditional papermaking museum can make sheet music paper from nanmu bamboo that will last a thousand years. Under Su Xiaoya's embroidery needle, lotus vines bloom to the sound of music!
Traditional music, mortise-and-tenon joinery, papermaking, and embroidery: four forms of intangible cultural heritage join forces to smash every scheme!
From dazzling audiences nationwide on a dating-show stage, to playing Chinese music at Vienna's Golden Hall, to bringing masters of traditional music from five continents together on the old street...
Holding his three-stringed instrument beneath the plaque of a national intangible cultural heritage center, Lin Xiao smiles as Shen Yu's reputation lies in ruins:
“You can destroy an instrument, but you can't destroy five thousand years of cultural heritage!”
