1956, Beijing. A capitalist young man who was kicked out of the public-private partnership worked as a temporary worker at a scrapyard with a monthly salary of eighteen yuan and slept in a Datong store.
Everyone calls him trash. Everyone laughed at him for picking up rags.
This "waste" has all the skills of the top restorer of the Forbidden City in 2026 in his mind.
When his fingertips touch the rotten wood and porcelain that "destroyed the four olds" - time will flow back and civilization will breathe.
The mortise and tenon code of huanghuali in the Ming Dynasty, the opening pattern of the Ru kiln in the Song Dynasty, the inner fire of bronze casting in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and the pen and ink soul calligraphy of Wei and Jin calligraphy.
But he can use scraps to rub artifacts, use ancient medicine to become gods, and use thousands of years of skills to crush the entire era.
"I'm just an apprentice," he always said.
Then he casually wrote characters comparable to those of Wang Xizhi, popped up the lost ancient sounds of the Tang Dynasty, rescued national treasure-level ritual vessels from broken copper and iron, and used Shang and Zhou metallurgy to solve the problem of the earthen blast furnace of the Great Leap Forward.
Using only lacquer and gold repair, he restored the broken civilization to its original state.
In 1966, the storm was coming.
The Red Guards rushed into the warehouse and smashed all the "four olds". However, he had already "distressed" hundreds of core cultural relics into rags - armchairs from the Ming Dynasty were as rotten as dead wood, and porcelain from the Song Dynasty was washed away like moldy tiles. Kick it up and it "seems" to be broken, but in fact it is intact.
"That's a broken bowl, so be careful with it."
He smiled and watched as the clown smashed his foot.
The scarier the times, the more almighty he is.
The crazier the world becomes, the quieter civilization becomes.
This is the story of a temporary worker at a scrapyard who spent ten years repairing the old areas as if they were old and keeping watch all night in the name of "destroying the four olds".
