Chapter 61: Real “fake” new tricks.
"Director Jia...are you working on a new work?"
"The shape of the cat... Are you trying to replicate the golden cat made of ceramics from the Shiwan kiln in the Qing Dynasty?"
Jia Wenyan: "You reacted very quickly. You even know about such an unpopular cultural relic."
"I went to the museum to learn more about it. Director Jia, if I'm not mistaken, you are using porcelain clay now."
In the Yongan workshop, when he came to do odd jobs as usual every weekend, he looked at the porcelain blanks in front of him with confusion.
"Normally, porcelain clay is used, but what I am going to make now is the cat artifact of Yongan College and Yongan Museum."
"For your own mascot, it is better to use the craftsmanship you are most familiar with, not to mention..."
"We're going to make a white cat."
Meow! (Yes, it is my golden...porcelain body.)
The little white cat, who had been waiting for a long time, was rubbing his hands excitedly on the stool nearby.
As the royal cat of the Yong'an Museum, the native Bai Huahua has long been tired of his "British shorthair" body in this life.
Although what Jia Wenyan made was just a ceramic shell, for a native cat that had been reincarnated many times in Donghuang, reincarnation as a foreign cat was something it absolutely could not accept.
It was eager to regain its dignity as a "Sanhua". However, Jia Wenyan's schedule was really busy some time ago, so she had to postpone the "ceramic cat" project.
Of course, during this period, Jia Wenyan had planned more than once to go to Guangzhou Yangcheng to seek help from the Shiyaowan Golden Cat Spirit.
But not long after that, she figured out another thing, which was that the reason why the pottery golden cat spirit was created was not simply the skill but the bond between the craftsman and the royal cat.
The ceramic carrier is only one aspect and not the absolute one.
So now that the golden cat has become a spirit, it has sorted out the entire process of itself living on the pottery and submitted it to the Royal Cat Association.
Then there is no need for her to stir up other people's sorrows.
Because if pottery can do it, then porcelain should be able to achieve the same effect.
She used her memories to create the white porcelain cat doll in front of her, but...
Jia Wenyan: "Are you sure you want this waving gesture?"
Bai Huahua: (Of course, this is my real body in the future, so I have to use this posture that represents our royal cat casting a spell to look cool.)
"Cast a spell? So the saying of the lucky cat is really because..."
(Of course, meow, although I don't know how much of this is fabricated by you humans, but we royal cats do have the ability to help craftsmen "attract wealth").
(After the craftsman's skills are recognized by the culture, we will help him become known to the world. And property is often the most common form of fame. This is why you humans say "lucky cat".)
"I see. But what do you mean by you, the Royal Cats, can make the works of artisans known to the world? How do you do it? Is there any magic involved?"
"Didn't you tell me before that you Royal Cats only have the ability to supervise and record, and for the rest you can only rely on the help of the weapon spirits in your respective venues?"
(Well... never mind. Actually, it doesn't matter if I tell you about it?)
As Bai Huahua spoke, she moved to a stool that could get some sunlight and continued:
(It is true that our main ability is to use our eyes to record and archive, but at the same time, each of us is connected by an intranet. For thousands of years, our greatest interest on weekdays is to discuss the new and interesting things we have seen recently with other colleagues on the intranet.)
"So it's just a giant gossip chat group, right?"
(Almost. Although the existence of the intranet is to prevent the Royal Cat from having memory gaps during reincarnation, for thousands of years, we Royal Cats have indeed used the intranet more as a chat group.)
(The Royal Cats are spread all over the country, and every Royal Cat can inherit the memory of the previous generation of Royal Cats as soon as it awakens. On this basis, the knowledge and interesting stories that our Royal Cats have are beyond the reach of ordinary people.)
(We compiled everything we saw into a book and used the intranet to get other Royal Cats to help spread the word across the country.)
(People would only think that it was a story that came from nowhere, but they didn’t know that it was exactly the propaganda that our Royal Cat did for the craftsmen.)
Jia Wenyan: "I see. That's why Donghuang has so many mythological stories whose origins are unknown?"
(Yes, but of course not every royal cat has such strong literary talent or painting skills, so there are often cases over the centuries where royal cats did not promote their owners’ works until many years after their owners died.)
Jia Wenyan OS: So this is the reason why many artists only become famous after their death?
Jia Wenyan was secretly complaining in her heart. She had thought that the royal cats had some special abilities that could help them promote Donghuang culture around the world, but now it seems that she was worrying too much.
The propaganda effect of the Royal Cat may have been very effective in that era of backward transportation and communication, but in modern times this method of communication may not be as good as spending some money to hire a few Internet trolls.
Jia Wenyan got a headache when she thought about it.
Originally, at the beginning, she was only worried about whether she could inherit Donghuang's intangible cultural heritage skills from the cultural relics and spirits.
But now, as she got to know the Golden Eyes of Time more and more deeply, she was finding it increasingly difficult to simply immerse herself in her skills as before.
As the owner of the Golden Eyes of Time, compared to Grandma Lin, she really thinks everything is too simple.
She once naively believed that all she needed to do was to pass on as many skills as possible from the spirits of the cultural relics while repairing them, and that would be worthy of the ability bestowed by God.
But after talking with Xu Yonghe, Jia Wenyan began to realize that her past thoughts were really too naive.
She was not good at business, and all the methods she could think of had already been tried and practiced by Grandma Xu.
She didn't know what else she could do besides passing on her skills.
So from that day on, Jia Wenyan returned to the workshop and locked herself in the workshop.
She began to desperately replicate one cultural relic after another that was lost abroad and could not be brought back to the country.
Dragon-patterned glazed bricks, Yuan Dynasty blue and white David vase, she was no longer obsessed with just the British Museum, but began to use the information collected by Grandma Xu to replicate the cultural relics one by one that could carry the spirit of the artifact back to its place.
Her hands fly day and night with a full sense of responsibility.
She would use a period of time that most people could accept to hand in a replica of the cultural relic, and then through Grandma Xu, the exaggerated number of replicas produced during this period would be collected into the Yong'an Museum in the name of other craftsmen.
For four whole months, neither the media nor tourists, and even the staff of Yong'an College, saw Jia Wenyan walk out of the workshop again.
She immersed herself in the spirit of the weapon, and used the method of going back and forth between the spirit spaces to continuously accumulate and improve her skills.
In four months, 99 pieces of ceramic and bronze artifacts were reproduced. Qiling space, workshop, Qiling space, workshop...
She squeezes her time as much as possible, so that in the eyes of others, Director Jia seems to be completely immersed in her career.
They could only get some recent news about Jia Wenyan from Shi Guang, who served as her assistant, and other staff members who were responsible for handing over the "works".
Even for most people, the only thing they can see is the teaching examples compiled by Yong'an College based on the video recorded by Jia Wenyan.
Four months and thirty replicas of cultural relics. This is the data known to the world. During that period, both locals and tourists were most looking forward to what kind of new cultural relics the Yong'an Museum would have in the near future.
Thirty replicas of Jia Wenyan's artifacts, plus artifacts reproduced by other unknown craftsmen, totaling ninety-nine ceramics and bronzes. With an average of one new piece every three days, the visitors' worldview is constantly refreshed.
Visitor A: "The current Yong'an Museum is probably the best museum in Donghuang in the field of ceramics and bronzes."
Tourist B: "It should be. Although these are just replicas, except for the lack of traces of time, these cultural relics completely replicate the characteristics of the originals."
"Apart from being very new, I really can't tell what's fake about it."
"Can a work that is so high-quality that it looks more like the original than the original because it is so old still be considered a replica? Not to mention the so-called original..."
"It's ruined."
Tourist C: "That's right. It's all the fault of those idiots at the British Museum. They didn't even know how to keep a constant temperature and humidity in such an important place as the museum."
"There are so many precious cultural relics, many of which are thousands of years old. If they are not carefully preserved, they will definitely deteriorate."
"Weathering, rust, damage, fading, the cultural relics that were swept away by the British Sun have been experiencing problems one after another in recent times."
"That's right. Take the Shuangyang Zun that we see now, for example. If Director Jia hadn't been smart enough to make a replica of it before it was destroyed, we wouldn't be able to see such exquisite bronze artifacts now."
"I think Director Jia is so eager to reproduce the artifacts that were taken away because he knows that the foreigners did not take good care of the artifacts."
Tourists complained because while Jia Wenyan was in "seclusion", the Donghuang cultural relics in the British Museum collapsed and were destroyed to varying degrees.
As soon as the news came out, it directly angered countless Donghuang people.
Because in the eyes of Donghuang people, the existence of those cultural relics represents not only cultural heritage, but also a testimony to that humiliating history.
When things that were stolen from their homes were damaged due to poor storage before being found, even those Donghuang people who didn't know much about cultural relics would instinctively feel angry because of the national consciousness that runs in their bones.
The first reaction of most people to this incident was that the people of the British Empire were confused, and the people of Donghuang were angry. Little did they know that those cultural relics that were "damaged" due to poor storage were the real "fakes".
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