Entering the organic cultural relic restoration room of Inner Mongolia Museum, time seemed to slow down, and the air was filled with tranquility, with only the faint sound of tools occasionally lightly touching. Cultural relic restorer Shi Liqin leaned over the workbench with a focused expression. Her "patient" was a yellow brown embroidered leather bag from the Liao Dynasty, dating back thousands of years. You see, it has already solidified as a whole, and the surface fabric is also a bit aged, faded, and damaged. ”Shi Liqin introduced that this exquisite leather bag is composed of three materials: leather, textile, and bronze. "The combination of three textures and three 'temperaments' makes maintenance more complicated." In the face of this difficult cultural relic restoration, the first thing to solve is the tightly attached bronze buckle on the leather bag. Due to the susceptibility of bronze material to humidity, while leather bags themselves are composed of leather as the base and fabric covering the surface, they belong to composite materials. Their internal humidity tolerance is significantly different from that of bronze, and forced moisture regain or physical separation may cause irreversible damage. For this reason, the cultural relic restorer tailored a slow and delicate "rejuvenation" treatment for it. By gradually adjusting the humidity, the bronze buckle can gradually adapt while avoiding secondary damage to other materials, until the bronze buckle can be safely and undamaged removed. The process of this resurgence is very long. ”Schlieffen said that at a specific temperature and humidity, the leather bag is wrapped in a gentle mist, and the fibers slowly "awaken" from the extremely thirsty state. The originally stiff folds also gradually become soft and show signs of loosening. Until the conditions were ripe, the bronze buckle was carefully removed and sent to the inorganic cultural relic restoration room for separate processing. The long 'resurgence' is just the first step, and on the leather bag in front of us, the dust of time and the traces of aging are still clearly visible. How to 'cleanse' it? Schlieffen picked up the low-pressure vacuum cleaner and said, "Because the cultural relics themselves are relatively 'fragile', the suction force must be gentle, and only a small area of negative pressure can be used to gradually remove the floating dust and pollutants on the surface. After removing the 'dirt' on the surface, the next step is more precise 'shaping' and 'filling'. The smoothing of every wrinkle and the support of every part require extreme patience and precision. Shi Liqin told reporters, "There is no set time for the maintenance and repair of this leather bag because the entire process is often full of uncertainty. Only through continuous observation and judgment can we decide what to do next." At the Inner Mongolia Museum, known as the "Cultural Relics Hospital," every restorer is a "doctor" who diagnoses and treats cultural relics. Like a real hospital, accurate diagnosis cannot be achieved without advanced testing equipment. In the cultural relics protection laboratory, the person in charge, Xue Luyue, operated the instruments to explore the "secrets" hidden in the tiny residues and copper rust powder that fell from the leather bags. We use X-ray diffraction to analyze the composition of copper rust and determine whether it is stable and harmless or a 'harmful rust' that needs to be removed; In the later stage, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry will be used to analyze the types of fibers and dye components in the residue of leather bag textiles. ”She pointed to a row of precision instruments and said, "Due to equipment limitations, we need to further conduct SEM-MS (Scanning Electron Microscopy Mass Spectrometry) in the later stage, and also need to send it to relevant cultural and scientific research institutions. However, we are making every effort to use technological means to 'interpret' more historical information carried by cultural relics. ”In the inorganic cultural relic restoration room, cultural relic restorer Ji Yuanyuan displayed another "surgical" scene. Not long ago, they just completed the restoration of a Tang Dynasty silver gilded golden horse saddle decoration. This exquisite saddle decoration is covered with a large area of hard surface texture, which is extremely difficult to clean due to the thinness of the cultural relic itself. ”Ji Yuanyuan said that before carrying out the cleaning work, they first used a handheld X-ray fluorescence spectrometer to detect its composition, providing a basis for subsequent work. Then, like a surgeon performing a delicate surgery, they used surgical knives, bamboo sticks, cotton swabs and other tools to clean it bit by bit for nearly two months before allowing it to regain its original splendor and smoothly enter the exhibition hall. Jiyuan Garden emphasizes that "the restoration of cultural relics follows strict norms: the principles of minimal intervention, recognizability, reversibility, and maintaining the original state of cultural relics. Every step we take today must ensure that they can be reprocessed in the future." Starting from extracting cultural relics from the warehouse, information collection, disease identification, detection and analysis, developing personalized plans, and ultimately implementing restoration and even intervening in the packaging and preservation environment after restoration... Each cultural relic's restoration and maintenance has a complete "diagnosis and treatment" process, which may take a long time, and the restoration and maintenance time of complex cultural relics cannot be calculated in simple working hours. Cultural relics are non renewable resources, and maintenance and restoration work is not only to keep them in their original state, but also to better inherit the historical information they carry. ”Wang Jiajun, Minister of Cultural Relics Protection Department of Inner Mongolia Museum, said that currently, this team of only 13 people is responsible for the protection, restoration, and evaluation of cultural relics in the entire museum. They are trying to break down the professional barriers between organic and inorganic matter, allowing "testing doctors" and "surgeons" to collaborate more closely. They are also planning to build a space of over 800 square meters into an "open cultural relic restoration room and interactive research base" for the Inner Mongolia Museum, expanding the influence of cultural heritage protection and inheritance, and allowing more people to understand the value and charm behind this lonely commitment. (New Society)