Lin Yan, a modern restorer of lacquerware artifacts, accidentally transmigrates while restoring a Warring States Period lacquer coffin decorated with intertwined vines. He becomes a despised live-in son-in-law of the Su family in Gusu. Facing the second branch’s hostility and the family lacquer workshop’s looming bankruptcy, he rejects any easy golden finger and finds a way through with the skills he has honed over millennia.
He restores lost techniques such as rhinoceros-hide lacquer and dry-lacquer hemp-cloth sculpture, and creates the celebrated lacquer scroll A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains: Ten Thousand Li Along the Silk Road. He breaks through the feudal taboo against teaching crafts to women and opens a free school for artisans. Joining forces with craftspeople throughout the realm, he abolishes the hereditary artisan registration system that has endured for centuries, freeing a million artisans from the lower classes. After an earthquake, he rushes to the disaster zone and uses his craft to help the people. He spearheads the founding of an International Artisans’ Alliance, uses lacquer as a bridge for cultural exchange between East and West, and brings Chinese lacquer art to the world. He is revered as the “Sage of Craftsmanship.”
Lacquer brings him together with Su Qinghuan, the Su family’s legitimate daughter. They come to understand and cherish each other, and carry on the cultural legacy hand in hand. He spends his life preserving his craft and protecting the people, bringing his story to a fulfilling close. A thousand years later, the two reunite as an artifact restorer and an inheritor of intangible cultural heritage. Before the same Warring States Period lacquer coffin, they complete a cycle of craftsmanship that transcends time.
With traditional lacquer art at its heart, the novel combines a family’s rise from adversity, the integrity of artisans, and devotion to the nation. It embodies the artisan’s spirit of “Lacquer never deceives, and the heart never betrays the light,” and sings a paean to a legacy passed down across a thousand years.
"The Lacquer Art Son-in-Law" is a love letter I wrote to all lacquer artists. I don't want to write about a cliché son-in-law who can crush everything with his golden fingers. I just want to write about a real craftsman - he has no unparalleled martial arts skills, no scheming against heaven, only a paint brush in his hand, and only eight words in his heart: "The paint does not deceive people, and the hands do not deceive the heart." All the exciting points in the book are rooted in real lacquer techniques, from rhinoceros leather lacquer to dry lacquer to clip ramie statues, from ecological lacquer forests to the All Nations Craftsmen Alliance. I want readers to see that craftsmanship is never the last skill. It can make a living, save people from fire and water, connect Eastern and Western civilizations, and support the cultural heritage of a nation. The love between Lin Yan and Su Qinghuan has never been about attachment and being attached. It is a two-way rush of the souls of two craftsmen, and a resonance of original aspirations that spans thousands of years. Maybe it's not cool enough or bloody enough, but I hope people who read it can remember the scent of lacquer that has traveled through thousands of years and those craftsmen who only do one thing in their lives.