This is the soul of donkey-hide gelatin and the blood of a nation.
On the winter solstice in 1895, 13-year-old Shen Huairen stood on the bank of Langxi River in Dong'a County (now Dong'a Town) and watched his father sink a copper coin to the bottom of the Yin water. He didn't know how long it would take for the copper coin to sink, but he remembered what his father said: "The river has a river god. Only if you respect it will it give you the best."
Sixty years later, the 74-year-old Shen Huairen planted a small locust tree at the former site of Runde Hall, walked along the Langxi River from the lower reaches to the upper reaches, took a sip of the river water, and said softly: "Dad, Huairen held it."
Over the past sixty years, an old copper pot, a gold glue shovel, and a volume of medical records were passed from the hands of a young man to an old man. He experienced his father being detained by the government, family heirlooms being forced to sell, the Japanese invasion, fleeing during the war, his wife and children being separated, the sacrifice of his comrades, the founding of New China, the public-private partnership - he endured all of it because he always squatted in front of the pot.
There is a group of people around him: Jiang Tiezhu who pretends to be crazy to teach his art, the mute uncle who died in the line of duty, Zhao Sanniang who transformed from a female gangster to a model worker, Lu Zhongxuan who wrote a 220,000-word manual with one eye, as well as his wife Zhao and son Shen Nianzu. They used their own lives to guard the pot for him generation after generation.
This is not a success legend, but a story about "keeping". A person spends his whole life guarding a pot, a craft, and a conscience. Don't lie to people, don't make fake glue, pretend to be a patient in your heart, and hold your conscience in your hand - this is the soul of glue.
The river flows through the ages, and the glue soul and fire are passed down forever.
