Paint

"Painting" (297 words) Twenty-six-year-old UI designer Lin Yan was debugging a design manuscript in Beijing when the news of his grandfather's death suddenly arrived. Her parents divorced early, and she had long been estranged from her hometown in Pingyao. She originally planned to return to the city after finishing her family affairs. But my grandfather left behind the precarious old paint shop in Pingyao, a roll of kraft paper drawings that had been sealed for a long time, and a childhood instruction: "After you finish it, you will know why." With a three-month deadline hanging over our heads, if we can't get the intangible cultural heritage certificate, the lacquer shop will be put up for sale. His opponent, Lu Yansheng, came from a family of lacquer artists and was proficient in lacquer art. However, he was severely allergic to raw lacquer and was unable to make lacquer himself. He instead devoted himself to industrial mass production, forming a confrontation with the ancient workshops. Lin Yan, who knew nothing about painting, was forced to stay. She practiced scraping and painting from scratch, endured the burning pain of raw paint allergy, and used the hierarchical thinking of UI design to dismantle ancient patterns. The strange brushstrokes on the drawings, the dusty old paint in the warehouse, and the father's frustration at giving up on his craft halfway, each old object reveals the family's buried past. The layers of lacquer covering the artifacts also cover the silent regrets and concerns of generations. The countdown is approaching, and Lin Yan, who is walking between tradition and modernity, must not only unlock the secrets hidden in the drawings, but also make his own life choices.