The Puppet Refuses to Take a Final Bow

Seventeen years after her mother disappeared, Su Wan heard her voice from behind the puppets during a live broadcast of an intangible cultural heritage signing: "Wanwan, don't sign." In order to raise money for her father's surgery, Su Wan had to return to Quanzhou and take over the Su family's string puppetry troupe, which was on the verge of dissolution. She was originally a top auditor in Shanghai, but was kicked out for exposing fraud in a listed company; now she has to face a group of relatives waiting to sell her ancestral business, a business contract with hidden traps, and family skills packaged by capital as "intangible cultural heritage renewal." On the night of the signing, a fire broke out on the stage. Su Wan relied on the puppeteering skills she learned in her childhood to save her little apprentice, but she found a note left by her mother under the tongue of the little Tsing Yi puppet with half of its face burned off: "The third compartment of the sink, don't believe your dad." In the hospital, my father, who had been in a coma for many years, suddenly woke up and his first words were: "Your mother is not missing, I buried her under the stage with my own hands." From then on, Su Wan learned the carving, opening, stringing and performance of Quanzhou string puppets while tracing the truth behind her mother's disappearance. She discovered that the "stage collapse accident" that caused a sensation in the city seventeen years ago involved not only the Su family and his daughter, but also the covered-up list of inheritors, stolen ancient opera scores, and an intangible cultural heritage business scam that continues to this day. The puppets cannot speak, but they can leave testimonies for the dead; the threads may seem thin, but they hold the fate of generations. When capital wants to buy the name of the Su family, her relatives want to force her to hand over her ancestral skills, and the mastermind behind the scenes lights up the stage again, Su Wan must make a choice between the truth, family love and inheritance - Let the inheritors stand in the spotlight again