Xunzhou Old Street hides eight intangible cultural heritage crafts that are on the verge of being lost.
Young Lin Yan returns to the dilapidated ancient papermaking workshop, and the reality before him is cruel and straightforward: the old street is about to be demolished, no one can continue the craftsmanship of his ancestors, machine mass production has swept the market, and counterfeit craftsmen who make profits under the banner of intangible cultural heritage are rampant in the world.
He met a group of young craftsmen who were also in trouble. Su embroidery craftsmen who embroider mountains and rivers with needles, wood carving girls who hold knives to carve the Spring and Autumn Period, and peers who devote themselves to mortise and tenon joints of ancient buildings, fan making, bamboo weaving, lacquerware, and firewood kiln porcelain. They have different personalities and conflicting ideas. At first they argued with each other and fought on their own. They guarded their poor and lonely craftsmanship and fought against the prejudice and capital of the traffic era.
Some people cling to ancient methods and regard innovation as deviant; some are eager to survive and almost lose their true intentions in fame and fortune. Poverty, misunderstandings, intergenerational estrangement, and peer rejection followed one after another. The young craftsmen finally put aside their differences and stood together as a team.
They don't try to become famous overnight, they just want to find a way to survive for their technology. Keeping the core of ancient laws and seeking new life in the times, while repairing the cultural context that is on the verge of rupture, we also fight against the proliferation of fake intangible cultural heritage.
There is no lingering love, only the craftsman's confidant relationship and the deep love between master and disciple. From a dying street, to the national stage, and then overseas. A generation of young craftsmen used their blood as fuel, proving that intangible cultural heritage has never been dusty specimens in museums, but fireworks in the world that are endless and circulated from generation to generation. Thousands of craftsmen work together, but their ingenuity never dies.
Purpose: Based on the growth of the new generation of young craftsmen, explore how traditional intangible cultural heritage crafts can maintain the core and embrace the times; demonstrate the persistence of craftsmanship and cultural inheritance, and support each other among craftsmen, find a balance point of inheritance in the wave of commercialization, and protect the longevity of traditional Chinese culture.