There Are Marks on the Old Paper

Introduction to the work "Old Papers with Traces" Shen Mo, 29 years old, is a restorer of paper cultural relics in a public museum. He works slowly. Mounting, patching, full color, back cover, a piece of torn paper sometimes takes several months to repair. After working with old paper for more than 20 years, Shen Mo gradually discovered that certain cultural relics would leave a very faint "remaining warmth" in his hands. Not seeing the past, nor hearing the dead speaking. Only occasionally, in a wisp of old ink, a layer of paste, or a crease, an indescribable emotion is captured. Cold. Wait. Regret or a word that could not be said. The real answer still needs to be found bit by bit through paper, ink, mounting, inscriptions, archives and restoration traces. As a result, a Ming Dynasty child examination paper broken into more than a hundred pieces revealed a private school teacher who has never been remembered by history; an unprinted old painting concealed a female painter from the Republic of China whose name was erased by her husband; and a secret letter that was almost charred completed a farewell that was overdue for a hundred years. Behind these old stories, Shen Mo also began to reconnect with an old incident from seven years ago that had never been answered - Gu Yansheng, the master who raised him single-handedly, mysteriously disappeared to protect a group of rare rare books, leaving only half of the densely annotated "Decoration Chronicle". When the old revision marks reappeared one after another, Shen Mo finally realized: what Master was tracing back then might have never been just a batch of books. Someone is restoring history. There are also people who are secretly rewriting history. And paper doesn't lie. As long as the traces remain.