Firelight

For a thousand years, Longquan celadon from the Ge kilns has relied on a tiny firing token to judge the kiln's temperature and determine success or failure. It is the most secret craft of traditional celadon-making, and the key to its success. Chen Qingyan, a young artisan, is devoted to preserving his family's traditional Ge kiln methods. He adheres to the old techniques of measuring temperature with firing tokens and controlling the kiln by hand, convinced that the craftsmanship of the old ways cannot be replaced. But as the marketization of intangible cultural heritage surges in the modern age, new ideas sweep through the porcelain-making town: mechanized temperature control, assembly-line production, and making ceramics for online fame. Old and new approaches collide fiercely, while family traditions and ancient techniques teeter on the brink of being lost. A kiln-transformation mystery buried for decades, a damaged firing token from the Republic of China era, and a kiln worker's notebook lost overseas gradually reveal the hidden past of Longquan Ge kiln techniques falling into obscurity and porcelain traditions diverging across the Strait. The mainland's techniques for making Cochin pottery and firing celadon, brought to Taiwan in the last century, took root and evolved separately on either side of the Strait. With their craft traditions divided but their artisans' original dedication in common, a new generation of craftspeople on both sides overcomes barriers and reaches out to one another. Chen Qingyan struggles and grows amid preservation and innovation, conviction and compromise, tradition and breaking into new markets. He solves the mystery of the lost firing-token method and restores the shared cultural heritage of porcelain craftsmanship on both sides of the Strait. Rejecting both rigid conservatism and restless, profit-driven opportunism, he brings traditional techniques back to life in a modern form. In the end, with the firing token as his spiritual emblem, he fuses the finest elements of porcelain art from both sides of the Strait, takes Longquan Ge kiln techniques beyond China's borders and onto the world stage, and continues the thousand-year legend of Eastern craftsmanship in celadon.