Yongqingfang

In a workshop tucked into Yongqingfang in Guangzhou, sixty-five-year-old Yu Zhaoji carves wooden biscuit molds the way his family has since the eighteen sixties, stamping sunflowers and longevity peaches into paddles once used across old Xiguan's teahouses. The guide follows how machine stamping gutted his trade after the year two thousand, emptying his order book and sending his own children toward other careers. It walks through the painstaking steps behind a single mold, from two years of air-drying wood to the shaping of the handle and bowl before the carving even begins.