Save Me, I’m Really Not a Genius Restoration Master

Other people restore cultural relics with their skills. Lin Tingwan restores them by listening to what the relics themselves tell her.

On her first day at work, a Xuande bowl shattered into three pieces shouted inside her head, “My waist’s been aching for hundreds of years! Hurry up and put me back together!” She did as it said, and her colleagues called her a genius.

Then the bowl officially moved into her brain. Anytime, anywhere, it was always ready to talk.

One bowl not enough? A Jiajing-era wooden panel showed up next, dishing out four hundred years’ worth of gossip. Then came an old Ming-dynasty lacquer box, a man of few words who always got straight to the point. Later, even an old bronze artifact that had lain silent in the storeroom for three years started talking

“I’ll handle the bronzes.”

Now she has a “Cultural Relic Restoration Department” living in her head, with porcelain, woodwork, lacquerware, and bronze divisions, each with its own clear responsibilities. They bicker so loudly during meetings that her head aches, but when a tough problem comes along, they’re more reliable than anyone.

The Cultural Relics Bureau specifically requested her for its expert team. Museums treasure her, and her colleagues call her “a genius who can feel relics breathing.”

She smiled and said nothing.

After all, who would believe that a genius’s secret is a bunch of chatty old antiques?