Shen Wenbing guards the "Box Corner" leather goods repair studio on Shengjinta Old Street in Nanchang, specializing in repairing the corners of ancient luggage bags. When he was eighteen years old, Su Nian stood in front of his house holding two train tickets to Beijing. He looked down at his worn canvas shoes and shook his head. From then on, there was no news for ten years.
Ten years later, an old LV box from Paris in the 1950s was anonymously sent to the studio. The corners of the box are carbonized and cracked, and the lock is stuck. The moment I pried it open, half a yellowed train ticket slid out - June 7, 2016, Nanchang→Beijing.
Shen Wenbing used the craftsmanship he had developed over ten years to repair this box: the hard Tochi wood leather corners had to withstand the impact of long-distance shipping, and the soft edges had to restore the texture of half a century. Temperature differences caused the leather glue to fail repeatedly, and the corners left permanently misaligned wrinkles after repeated pressure.
During the repair process, he discovered forty-seven returned postcards in the mezzanine of the box - sent from Beirut, Kabul, and Antarctica, all with wrong addresses. She kept writing "No. 25 Shengjinta Street", while he lived at No. 23.
Four years later, Su Nian set out again with the repaired box. Shen Wenbing finally filled in the address correctly, but he had already finished speaking.
The corners of the box have been repaired and it can withstand air pressure, temperature differences and long-distance bumps. But the material "preference" was finally exhausted by time after ten years of information isolation.
