Masters in Forbidden City (2016) - full transcript

OK.

The white cat has gone.

The cat has gone, it was startled.

No, it will surprise you
if you do not surprise it,

especially when it jumped out all of a sudden.

Let's go.

All right.

- You don't have one today?
- No, not for today.

It's cool that no visitors are here on Mondays,

Mondays are terrific without visitors

and better with a nice weather.



But it's a little bit hazy today,

it usually get hazy on Mondays.

You are riding bicycles in the Palace
like the last emperor.

So are you.

And you are riding and carrying the machines,

and, with someone on your bike.

I should take a photo for you.

How splendid the Central Axis is!

See, what a nice photo did I take!
And the lighting!

Wrong way, sorry for that.

Even I get lost sometimes, that's embarrassing.

Did I get the wrong way? Seems yes.

Stop shooting me, I'm a road nerd.

Bringing new relics?



Yeah.

To the main building.

A kettle, silver kettle,

the same craftsmanship
with the teacup set just now.

Yeah, almost, they both are

incised and filled-in with black lacquer,

need the same treatment, slight polish.

These screens were birthday presents
offered to Emperor Kangxi

for his sixtieth birthday.

Each of his 32 sons and grandsons

made one piece.

There will be an exhibition on birthday
celebration at the Meridian Gate this year,

and it will be on exhibition by then.

A lot of wormholes.

This is for the Reprodcution Workroom

to reproduce Emperor Qianlong's
horizontal inscribed board,

need sizing at the back
to make it support better.

Otherwise the ink will get
bleeding and feathering.

This is mainly for
the 90th anniversary of the Museum,

an exhibition on restoration achievements.

We picked this pair, for they are larger

and also because of their bad damage,

needing urgent repair and restoration,

repairing and restoration for salvage.

You need patience,

and patience comes
from decades of enduring practice.

This work requires patience, concentration

and persistence.

When I was a newcomer here,

Mr. Zhao assigned me a bronze bow

and told me to polish it.

That will practice your endurance,

make you persistent

and temper yourself.

He will find you a lot to do.

Such as giving you a pile of paper and
tell you to remove the grass residues on them.

You will find in the end that he do this

to make you tolerant, and temper yourself.

You spent half of your
three-year apprentice period doing this

and then some more, some new.

Such as painting mounting,

and finally graduated.

The imperial dates,

planted by my father and his peers.

People here have strong flavor of life,

like in your own daily life.

It's not the Palace Museum I assumed.

I thought that the Palace Museum

is well-conditioned.

When I came here,

in my imagination,

everyone would be like medical workers

working in a clean and tidy environment

with equipment all in readiness.

But when I came here in person,

which made you wonder
if any restoration can be really done

in conditions like this.

I did felt very disappointed

when I first came here.

I still remember the day
when I signed the work contract,

I was standing in the narrow alley
outside the door

wandering back and forth, for an hour.

I reached the doorstep, and turned back

and reached the gate, and turned back again.

It's a life change for me.

When I was at school,

I graduated with
the best performance in my class.

But I will not be able to
continue my art career here.

I enquired Xiao Ju,

they mainly learn and study
the techniques of the ancients

to guide their creativity.

But they are required to stop creative work.

Say, I quitted creative work, and came here.

He has classmates doing creative works outside

and are doing well and prosperous.

But you will work here unknown to public

for a whole life.

It is quite a temptation.

It's very hard to settle down and persist,

quite difficult.

It's a trial for your character.

Sometimes, I feel that deep inside,

quite as if that

I was dynamic and vibrant,

but this, it is dead and still

and always will be,
regardless of whatever you do.

All right, you win!

You win the fight between us,

and I got down to the research on it,

to know better of it.

You see the characters in the cartoons,

they rose to fight in order
to protect something,

right?

The same is true here,

you are protecting something.

I do not feel strong sense of mission,
to be frank.

But I see that in you,

so why don't you be honest.

Gradually, it develops in you...

Protective restoration.

Life your feet.

The practice at that time is succession

meaning to take over
your parents' working position.

This is my father,

I was standing here.

This is Qu Feng's master.

She is our previous director.

For the restoration factory.

This is the new director

who came in 1980,

no,1982.

This is how it looked before the restoration,

the inside,

and the outside.

This one is of a complicated structure.

Previous repair work was
proved to be a failure.

But it was disassembled

into parts,

so, this is a tough case.

Seriously rusted,

not easily to get repaired.

Repair of clocks does not
go like other static objects,

which will stay static there
after the repair is finished.

They are machinery,
and need to get running after the repair.

If you find it hard for them to get running

after your repair work,

that won't do.

The requirement for the repair may be easy,

sometimes with four words only,

regain its mechanical ability.

These are four easy words,

but contain profound and complicated contents.

Can it work?

Yes, this position, all right.

Minor repair will do good to it,

while major repair will ruin it

as you cannot keep many of its original parts.

But minor repair

will retain its original parts,
the original materials.

We are expecting 9 pieces next week

for minor repairs and then
sent for the Precious Collection

of the Stone Moat Exhibition,

this will bring us more data collection.

High level relics, very high level.

And that is what excites us concerning the job,

it makes you feel like
getting stimulants injected.

Some cultural relics are
not at a high grading level

and were not well preserved

latterly,

this led to damages
to calligraphies and paintings,

paperbrittleness,

brittleness of papers,

mildew stains,

various damages.

See, the weather here is dry in this season,

and you need to turn on the air conditioner

for the whole morning in order to peel it.

The humidifier has been working
for a whole morning

to increase the humidity,

we are now having
a humidity of over 50 percent.

Pig blood lime putty

is a common material used in ancient buildings,

especially in the base coat layers,

base coat layer in the Qing dynasty,

those of the ancient buildings, all use this.

I cannot stand with it.

I feel sick whenever I smell it.

Well, my nose is not sensitive, at all.

It is not so strong

as the base coat of
traditional Chinese lacquer,

but it's cheaper.

Large consumption of this

will lower the cost

in overall lacquer scraping case.

Generally, we made small videos
to record every step

and take several photos,

then we will have abundant data.

You see, both of our hands are occupied

when we are working,

so we need someone else

to take these photos and videos for us.

But with this,

you can take the photos very easily,

and it allows you to take photos and videos

when you are working.

It's convenient,

especially for restoration work
of cultural relics.

You have taken into account
in your repair process

what it looked like when it was broken,

and when you want
to take down the mending part,

it can regain its original state.

The less damage made to the cultural relics,

the better.

It's a compromise for you,

an overall consideration.

Not just thinking about
the regain demand in the future

and ignoring its intensity,

you have to meet the requirement of
exhibition and preservation.

The basic requirements

have to be met.

In fact, the more you get closer to the relics,

or a little bit inferior,

the better.

If your materials are too strong,

when it get a physical hit,

for example, if I glue here,

when a physical hit comes,

it may get broken.

The color is inappropriate, do it again.

It's not that complicated for an art major,

but not for me, a chemistry major.

When my colleagues of art major
do the coloring,

they get it done very quickly,

precise and accurate.

This time, I came out to purchase screws
of the Wooden Building Clock

using for the hinge, and the leg support,

some glue is also needed
if I find it applicable.

We have only two people
working here in the workroom,

my master and I, the two of us.

Mr. Wang became my master

the day I was assigned
to this workroom.

We did not hold such
a formal mentoring ceremony

as they did in the Kungfu novels,

but this

is also kind of the same relationship

as that in the novels,

one day as a teacher, a life as a father.

Let's see if Gao Fei can make it high up there,

I will go and help him if necessary.

My master is ill with ankylosing spondylitis.

What do you think about it, Zhou?

Satisfying, pretty satisfying.

I am satisfied.

It looks like a newly-completed piece,

glowing and blazing.

OK, so be it.

Refer to this tail,

and figure out its type

including the ribbon in the front.

It went downward when I first repaired it,

but I find later that

it is different from this one.

I forget to take off the lens cap.

It brings you back the history
to take a walk here,

full of bumps and hollows.

The face of the Buddha statue is wooden,

possibly with some paints on it.

Different paints have different
absorptive intensity of X ray.

Yeah, this one seems to

contain cinnabar or something else.

Yes, this part seems alike with that one.

And the lips,

the lips, have defects, a half is missing,

and the defect leads to falling-off of paints

when paints are gone.

The leftover will appear to be black in photos.

This part is...

Is it incorrectly painted?

See? A triangular print...

Did you play the slides backwards?

No, nothing to do with the slides.

Our three palm print lines
go along side by side,

while this, seems incorrect.

This line goes across,
the palm print of a Buddha.

No idea how they designed this

when they made it,

the design should be distinctive.

This is a Buddha statue for an exhibition
at the Palace of Compassion and Tranquility.

This piece,

oh you cannot call it by that,

this statue

is of the Liao and Jin period.

It's a wooden Buddha statue,

and we our woodware group are repairing it.

The statue had two of its fingers broken

when it was sent here.

A piece of his lower lip was missing,

and a broken ribbon here.

They requested that the repair should be done

to make sure that
it can be used in exhibitions,

and did not ask for more.

I think myself that

it looks unsightly with two fingers broken.

I think that,

first, the gesture,

though one piece of the finger is broken,

but there are remaining parts

for us to estimate
the form of the missing part.

Judging from the remaining

and second, the clues provided by
the form and size

of other well-preserved fingers.

So I called them and put up my suggestions.

We remade a replacement for the missing finger,

this will help make it
an unbroken Buddha statue.

It is said that incompleteness is
a kind of beauty,

while in fact, the missing part
makes you feel uncomfortable.

We repair this statue

with strong basis,

we will never do it without a basis.

We have two different opinions now.

One of them is

like what they do in the west,

the western theory,

you retain obvious difference

on the broken spot,

on whatever relics you repair,

clearly different from the original

to prove that the part has
undergone repair and restoration.

It's called figurability,

hoping to give the experts better
understanding of the true condition.

But for us,

we hold a traditional Chinese theory

of repairing to make it possibly
close to the original state.

Take facsimile of painting
and calligraphy as an example,

it can trace back to over a thousand years ago.

Modern creations,

no matter how good they are,

is totally different from handwork.

Inkjet printing

works with printing ink,

something lack of sense of texture.

It can never replace the handwork,

and you can never
neglect handwork practice, ever.

If you stop practicing,

it is hard to get it back over time.

I presume that the reason foreigners
do not choose this method

not because how they respect

the original items,

but that they cannot make it right.

People can easily tell their repaired parts.

But for us, with the real
good traditional techniques,

you can never tell

after the restoration.

And for us,

I dare not say that we have all inherited
what our masters can do,

but more and more loss will occur to the relics

with the inheritance
from generation to generation.

See, try to restore all the color spots.

Every color-loss spot needs
to inpainting twice or more.

One will not be enough,

one time will only

leave the color floating at the surface.

When you finish, it will gets better.

It was dirty, originally.

Come on, you do the peeling.

Take it easy, and go slowly.

We had a lining here just now,

a little bit water on it
and it will be rubbed off

after we finished the inlaying work.

Peel it off slowly and carefully.

Nobody here survives allergy to this lacquer,

those that are not allergic is
only a relative situation.

No, all are allergic.

Nobody can be spared.

This is an official ware
of the Southern Song Dynasty pottery.

It's rather shiny.

It needs further detection.

It must be a corrosion.

Yes, it is.

Same case with this one.

What's this? alkali?

Here we are.

You are not hurried today, Mr. Shi.

After you.

Oh, come on!

This is a big yard,

and there is another yard backward
for the pottery group,

so we do not get off work
and come out together at the same time.

Sometimes, you have to wait for a while.

Some of the pottery group are still in there.

We got trained at the security department
when our group first came here.

We learn how to secure the door
from the security guards,

and were also told by the masters

to shake the locks and
make sure that they were locked safely.

Door locked.

I was the last one.

Take it easy.

Door locked.

The clock industry have every reason
and full condition

to accelerate the transformation development.

We are at an age of Internet+,

what does the plus truly stand for?

For industrialists of clock making like us,

we need first, in this age,

to accept new ideas

and adapt ourselves to new modes.

Wang Jin,

Qi Haonan,

focusing on clock repair and restoration
at the Palace Museum,

great master, proficient and skillful.

You have many clocks at the Museum,
water spray timer.

I will not talk about gold-plating,

but instead,

not the ones with waterfalls,

do we have pipe organ music ones?

Yes, we do.

You do? Let me show you mine.

We have the pipe organ music clocks,

animal styled ones,

and varieties of other kinds.

We have one of such size at the Palace Museum.

Small one? Small ones are too common.

Yes, small one.

This one is much bigger,

you see the smaller one beside?

Seems we don't have such
a big one at the Museum,

we have a smaller one.

Yes, a smaller one,
there are smaller ones on the market.

I just want to say that

if only I have two or three pieces that
the Palace Museum has not,

I will feel delighted.

Well, then you have good reasons
to be delighted,

there are too many good pieces
on the market outside the Museum.

Clocks at the Museum come
from collections around the world,

mostly from Britain and France.

Early clocks, during the
Emperor Qianlong's period,

including those from Guangdong Province

as well as clocks from the Royal Workshop,

the collections should
rank high among the world.

Anyway, it's the royal collection
in those days,

almost all are boutiques from around the world,

including our large-scale British clocks,

you cannot even find an equivalent
in the British Museum.

These are clocks that are unique,

almost across the world.

Mr. Huang Jiazhu

participated in more than 1000 auctions

around the world.

He has some nice pieces,

the early fraction of his collection.

Maybe he was just trying to have a competition

with the Palace Museum collection.

Weaving repair is not good for your eyes.

Long time work will blur your vision.

I think when I grow older,

I will not be able to do this any longer.

The cherry trees suffered heavy losses.

The cherries?

All blown off?

Only a few days have passed, it's getting damp,

not good for our work.

The situations were good days ago,

but when it gets damp,

the baseplate grows deformed.

The upper part

may need readjustment later.

I need two.

I am waiting for my apprentice.

You go first.

Off you go.

Shall I?

My apprentice hasn't come yet, either.

You are also waiting for him?

Well, we are both masters
waiting for their apprentices.

My master has got me my ticket.

He has got his ticket.

Are you still waiting?

- You go first, I will catch you later.
- Gao Fei.

My apprentice is still not here.

You are waiting for him too?

Feeling distinguished with an apprentice, huh?

Sure.

You are also waiting for your apprentice?

All right...

It's quite a nice day today.

The apprentices today,

how to say,

are like heaven and earth

compared with apprentices before.

They now are highly-educated

with good education background.

They practiced a lot at school

and it's easy to guide them,

much easier than before.

When in the past,

you have to teach them almost hand by hand.

Where did you eat? Qilaishun?

No, somewhere out of the West Prosperity Gate.

He is the kind of person with a good character.

I learned a lot from him, that's true,

and I feel content and gratified
to get the chance.

It's great to have such a good master

guiding you, on good behavior
and diligent work.

There's still a lot for me to learn from him.

To be a master

is something pretty traditional, in a way.

But the traditional part has got lost

when they first came here as apprentices.

They had some related background

which sometimes makes it more difficult
to teach than a greenhand.

Do not use the paste brush on this.

If you do it like this,
the paste will not pile up.

While if you use the bristle brush,

the paste will form tresses.

When you finish your brushing,
there will be paste tresses.

They are still not skillful enough,

they are young and lack of experience,

but they will get skilled with time,
the more skilled, the better.

We do not have too much work here,
not too much,

and proficiency comes
with continuous work and practice.

This is to preserve its moisture.

Where does this cat come from?

A stray cat.

All deserted by their owners,

and there are wild cats here too,

giving birth to kittens.

Our director of the Palace Museum

has had the cats sterilized

to stop them giving birth to more kittens,

or there will be too many cats here.

See, they are picky and
only choose to eat the sauce,

greedy cats.

Cats are not so easy to raise,
you know that, right?

Dogs are easier,

they eat what you feed them.

This is something we had when we were kids,

like a bird, flying high in the sky,

free and unrestrained.

What young people are playing nowadays?

What is it called?

Paraglider or what.

I am a man of fantasy

sometimes...

full of strange ideas in my mind

and hope to have a try in person.

But you see,

it would be quite fantastic,

the feeling

to fly in the sky,

don't you think so?

What happened?

It's dead.

NO!

Did you do this?

Why would they admit?

You are talking back?

Come on.

It must be the three birds that
killed it last night.

They know the ropes.

Sure they do, certainly.

Admit, or I will pluck your feather.

Yes, pluck the feather; you are more cruel.

I began to repair Chinese Guqin
from around 2006

when my master taught me how to repair them.

There were indeed doubts

that Guqin are musical instruments,

while you major in lacquer craftwork,

lacquer craftwork is not the problem for me,

but Guqin is not only lacquer craftwork.

It is musical instrument, too.

Can you do it? Can you?

So I started learning to play the Guqin,
learn to make Guqin.

When our predecessors
did lacquer craftwork repairs

as what they put it
in the Records of Lacquering,

written by Huang Cheng in Ming Dynasty
and annotated by Yang Ming,

it is said that

skilled restorers can
repair inferior craftworks

while bad ones cannot repair
the exquisite masterpieces.

If you are skilled and
with high level techniques,

and you go and repair an item of a lower level,

that's OK, no problem,

you are capable of it, higher than his level,

that's a piece of cake, for you.

Hello, is Mr. Wang there?

I'd like to speak to Mr. Wang.

Hi, Mr. Wang. When will you have time
to fetch the door leaf

and finish the enamel repair?

- Ouch.
- Slow down and be careful.

Gang-

Here you are.

Where is the item?

Hand it out.

Where did you hide it?

I'm holding it up.

Lay it down, you get the front part.

Two men hold one end.

But you have only one young man.

One young man, and another aged young man.

Come on, Mr. Wang,
you help him to hold the other end.

OK, here.

The nails may need further processing, right?

I mean the joint.

This one?

Be careful, it's not strong enough.

Come with me, let's both hold the same end.

Rise and set out.

Mind the door behind you, Mr. Wang.

All right, make a turn

and go this way.

OK, that's right, good.

What a masterpiece!

What we are doing now,

what we get access to, these cultural relics
left by the royals of Qing Dynasty

are mostly arts and crafts items.

They may looks like
a pile of objects stay there in silence,

but you will find their beauty hidden inside.

When you get close to them,

their true brilliance.

They have some spiritual stuff underneath

which makes you feel its vitality.

Cultural relics are actually like human beings,

and it has something to do

with your spiritual realm.

In this world we live,

we see the world from the angle of a man.

This is the relationship
between man and the matter.

Ancient Chinese people pay great attention
to investigation and research of things.

But what is that?

To understand objects
from your angle as a man,

and discover yourself
from the angle of objects,

and the Chinese make a chair
as if he's developing his own character.

He have the same demand both on the chair
and his own character.

It is said that jade has six virtues,

and we compare a man
of noble character to a jade.

In fact, jade is but a stone,
what virtue can you expect of it?

But the Chinese see virtues from the "stone",

they get inspirations from the objects

to understand the objects.

And use the understanding
to help improve themselves,

such a process.

Therefore, the ancient objects,

objects in the Palace Museum are
living and spiritual,

that's more because

people who made them
blended themselves with the objects,

the objects carry the idea of
their makers naturally,

their beauty-appreciation

and their cognition.

The Guqin manufacturing of the our predecessors

is a complete set of techniques.

It is hard to surpass their achievements.

To be mysterious, it's a communication
between the heaven, the earth and man himself,

that is actually a self-examination
of the scholars,

a rational process.

To make a Guqin is likewise,

it needs you to do it with mental calm.

The object carries

the spirit of its maker,

similar to the principle that
paintings reflect the painter.

It has good toughness.

It's too small.

It's all right.

One and a half meters, two meters.

Enough for now.

Pull tight.

Good, that's it.

The ground is covered with plums
when we came to work on Monday,

all falling from the trees.

When did you knock them down?
The strikes just now?

You came with a basin?

He came with a basin.

Pick me some stoned ones.

It's delicious.

My mouth is watering.

You can have a try.

Take a try.

Hold by these two positions.

Hook it with your hands in order
not to press the hands.

We follow the command of Mr. Wang

and coordinate well.

Let me see.

Lower it down.

- Is that OK?
- OK!

All right?

Somewhere sticked?

Not bad, one more millimeter.

OK, there is a hole here.

Golden yellow everywhere.

Apricots.

Are they edible, the fallen ones?

I think it's OK.

No problem.

It's small, water will be OK for it.

Rinse it, rinse it later.

Add another layer of paper in front
when you place it,

making it easy for you to turn it over.

No more worry at this stage,

we need to wash off all its smudginess

and clean it up.

The cleaning process is not that
we wash it directly with water

which surprised the foreigners.

It scares them.

In fact, we are very cautious about it,

based on the condition of the paintings,
don't you agree?

We will never use washing method directly
on the heavy-colored works.

OK, that's all right after the washing.

Paste the two pages to its front,

and it gets easier to be turned over,
it's tougher.

OK.

All right, done, so flat and solid.

Are the characters peeled off?

Isn't that very soft?

Very brittle.

You need to train and cultivate successors.

Traditional techniques like these,

an apprentice needs several years' culturing,

talent shortages may occur
if we do not adopt the new.

You must have successors,

it's good to have new faces here.

We may have three newcomers this year.

I'm making a fool of myself.

How to use this tripod? How to uplift it?

How can I uplift it?

You need to make it a little higher?

Yes, raise it higher.

It's too high.

- Is that OK? This high?
- OK, that will do.

I get to know why I cannot bring it into focus,

the focus point, was tuned to

a mode of many focuses,

yes, many focusing points.

But I need only one focus,

the point stays aside, losing the focus,

- someone tuned it to the multifocal mode.
- OK.

Done?

See, it's done.

Current technologies have their own advantages,

such as the 3D printing we just mentioned.

What's its merit?

If you have a part missing here,

usually, we adopt a method of moulding

like the missing part here,

we will find a similar pattern

from another position

and take it as the mold.

But mould release agent will be
necessary in your release process,

and it is pretty hard
to get rid of the agent completely,

leaving much oil substances
on the newly developed part

which will remain affecting
the surface of the bronze ware.

However, 3D printing is free of this problem,

the general graphics computing on the ware

will do no harm
to the cultural relics themselves,

and that will be a better protection
and restoration for the relics.

The materials are stable now,

especially that it is preserved indoors.

Therefore, it will need no further repair
in at least 50 years

after this repair.

Think about what it's like 50 years ago,

like the 1960s,

what's that like?

But recent years,
especially recent one or two decades

have seen rapid development
in science and technology.

There are fast improvements in materials.

So, just imagine, in 50 years,

people will maybe solve problems that
we cannot today.

Like consolidating agent that
is not possible now,

may be invented in the future,

what we are using now is
those easy-to-get tools.

I water the flowers every Monday

as they dry out after a weekend.

Huazi.

Watching Lao Shen watering the flowers?

Mew, let's shake hands.

Your hand,

give me your hand.

Mew.

Follow me every time I water the flowers, huh?

Hello, is Qu Feng there?

Can you call him?

Can you tell him to come to our workroom later

and take a look at a wooden ware?

OK.

- Qu Feng, take a look.
- What?

I want to pile these two up,

is it possible?

Will it be crushed?

Not with a support.

What do you usually use as a support?

Two clubs across will do.

Hi, Qu Feng, do us a favor,

we are trying to pile this screen up.

I'm telling you that
we and the wooden ware group

have maintained a very good relationship.

I worked in their yard for some time

when I began to work here,

we were working with many senior masters.

Whenever we find any of those

little unknown creatures,

I call them

to come up and help.

That's pretty good time.

You cannot find emotional bonds like this
in commercial companies,

and also, to work in an office building,

no matter how fancy the building is.

- It's no rare thing.
- Brings you no feels unlike this.

However, few are able to
work in the Forbidden City,

not to mention working in a bungalow
of the Forbidden City.

Maybe I will get no feels like this

if I worked in an office building.

The relationships between us will stay,

but it's surely not this feel,

the traditional Peking feel.

We may also help each other by then,

but the feel of courtyard will be no more.

For the sake of the security of the relics,

and their better development,

moving to Xiheyan will provide us
a better condition.

How can we carry it away?

You go first.

Is it OK?

A little bit too much on the other end, right?

Move it back a little.

The head cover, on both ends.

And the upper hanging scroll
have all been consolidated,

and the brims too.

The main silk strapping is newly added.

OK, seems like a new one.

Tie it up.

Good, thanks.

Feel relieved and have someone taken it away.

Great satisfaction, right?

I didn't say that.

All right.

That form,

tear it down.

Mr. Shi.

- Hi, how are you.
- Hi.

I pay little attention

to the signature.

You find your joy in the process of the repair

and gain your own sense of accomplishment,

then the result is not so important to you.

Men come and live in the world

and may want to leave a trace behind,

but most people think that

only when the restorers repair
and restore the relics

can they show their value.

While in fact, not necessarily,

he come to know better of himself

in the repair process

through his communication with the relics

and his comprehension.

So, for him, that's where the importance lies.

You may not feel that way at times,

but when you look back,

time goes fast,
and the life of a man is really.

Your time at work, these dozens of years

is but a glimpse.

So, if you cannot do something and
make exquisite works,

it is quite a pity, I think,

don't you agree?

If you happened to repair and
restore one piece,

you are lucky enough.

I came to stay at the Museum
when I was only three,

living next to the Forbidden City.

My father brought me here every day

and I visited the rooms one by one

from here to my father's workroom.

I am familiar with every room here

like that was in my own home.

Though I may say that

I will pack up and
leave immediately once I retire,

but deep down in my heart, I hate to leave,

I will.

If they need me back,

I will be happy to be reemployed

and continue my work,

here.

All will gather here in a minute.

See, handsome, huh?

Look around and see if every corner
is clear and all right.

You are quite familiar with this,
how many years have you been doing like this?

Quite right.

Make sure that nobody is there.

All right, mission accomplished.

See you after the holiday, master.