'When the greasy filth is wiped off, those ves-sels appear in front of me, beaming and shining. I feel like I am traveling back to ancient times to talk with my ancestors," Hou Xue says proudly whenever he mentions repairing and restoring cultural relics in the Palace Museum in Beijing. Hou is a representa-tive inheritor of the state-level intangible cultural heritage of producing gold-inlaid lacquerware. "It is the honor of a lifetime to repair these precious ancient vessels," he said.