Synopsis
A golden pair of scissors missing for eighty years, and the intertwined fates of four generations of barbers.
In 1943, Great-Grandfather Chen Shouyi fled the war with his barber's kit on his shoulder. His token of love was stolen, and the mute girl A Xiu, heartbroken, was married off to another man. The golden scissors vanished without a trace. A riddle was left on the land deed: “The blade dances like a dragon for thirty years; beneath the barber's chair lies the clear sky.”
In 2026, fourth-generation heir Chen Xingye holds his great-grandfather's ox-bone comb. Touching objects in an abandoned state-run barbershop lets him sense their past: the blood of 1948, a love letter from 1978, short hair from 1997, a cassette tape from 2003. Four generations of love and loss gradually come to light in the whir of a pair of scissors.
From Beiping to Anyang, from Shenzhen to Milan, the golden scissors are hidden in a sharpening cloth, buried in a hollow chair back, and even melted into the tip of an embroidery needle. Only when the three forms of the roaming blade finally come together does Chen Xingye discover that the land deed points not to a piece of land, but to a road that never ends.
Eighty-three years on the road, all for a single cut. But the moment the scissors are returned to their place, the fifth generation has already taken hold of the handles.
The journey goes on.
