Ancient books restored: science as the ruler, craftsmanship as the soul

Song Jing repairs paper by hand and analyzes it with instruments. She is deputy head of the Document Restoration Team at the National Library of China.

Speaking at the 2026 Beijing Culture Forum, Song described the work as a two-pronged craft: science as the ruler — used to identify the dye, the fiber, the cause of decay — and craftsmanship as the soul, fingertip warmth coaxing the brittle sheet back to its original form.

A book kept under perfect conservation but never opened is only half-kept, she argued. The craft exists, she said, to make the pages legible again — and to put them back into the hands of readers. That, Song argued, is where the inheritance of the past actually happens.