Before the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2016, Beicheng.
Nian Xi, a mooncake mold sculptor, received an anonymous invitation to design a Mid-Autumn mooncake mold for the century-old "Yuemanlou" brand. She didn't know that the heir behind her was Gu Yanzhi, her classmate who left her without saying goodbye fifteen years ago.
He came back with a fully automated production line and requested that the traditional auspicious cloud pattern be changed into a spiral pattern with the highest machine demolding rate. She insists that the 0.3 Mm error in hand-carving is the breath of wood and the soul of mooncakes.
During the dispute, a dusty past event surfaced. During the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2001, there was a problem with the "West Tower Watching the Moon" mold carved by Nianxi's grandmother for Yuemanlou, which caused the entire batch of mooncakes to be scrapped and the century-old store almost went bankrupt. Grandma practiced swordsmanship for ten years, and Gu Yanzhi left for Germany.
Now, the last three swords of "Watching the Moon at the West Tower" need to be carved with moonlight.
Her hand is injured, family feuds are revealed, and rivals poach her. Nian Xi discovered that this reunion was not just about two people - two mooncake molds, three generations, and seventy years of waiting were all hidden in that moon.
This is a contest about the adaptation of traditional totems, a choice between handwork and machines, and an emotional pull that spans fifteen years.
When the moonlight shone on the wooden mold and the last knife fell, she realized that there were some things that the machine could never press out.
