At Beijing’s Palace Museum, it sometimes seems that time stands still, but the clocks keep ticking at a small workshop there. This is where clock conservator (文物修复员) Qi Haonan works. .

As part of the fourth generation of conservators to repair and restore antique (古老的) clocks at the museum since 1949, Qi has returned more than 100 clocks to their former glory.

After having majored in mechanical automation during his university studies, Qi joined the cultural relics restoration department at the Palace Museum in 2005. “In the beginning, everything in the palace was new to me. It made me excited to even think about repairing antique clocks,” the 41-year-old told China Daily. But reality soon weakened his warmth. There is a rule at the museum: For the first year you can look, but not touch. From 8 a. m. to5 p. m. every day, he checked and took apart watches and clocks collected from his friends to practice. After a year of repeated work, he could finally get his hands on the clocks in the museum and get a better understanding of the job. To him, restoring such clocks doesn’t mean making them look brand-new. Through cleaning and restoration, he tries to keep them in their original form, bringing back their former function.

Qi still remembered the excitement he felt when the hands of his first repaired clock began to move. It was a French clock, which took him a month to restore. “What amazes me most about these clocks is that they combine the scientific advances, technological precision (精确) and trends in decorative art of their particular times,” Qi told China Daily.

Although the antique clock repairing special skills at the Palace Museum were listed as a national intangible (非物质的) cultural heritage in 2014, it was still a little-known skill and the specialty was in short supply of professionals. Until 2016, a 3-part TV documentary, Masters in the Forbidden City, made it possible to the public.

Qi started posting videos about the antique clocks on social media in 2019, giving viewers a look into the work. “With rising attention and influence, antique clock restoration can not only be further developed, but also expanded to more museums which house antique clocks and watches,” Qi told China Daily.

I remember clearly my first pineapple on ice at a corner deli in New York. It was on the north-east corner of Columbus and 57th Street, a store filled with flowers and fresh produce that stayed open all night. In my first flush of enthusiasm for the new city, everything about that deli seemed great. Abundance! Convenience! Pineapple, freshly cut and packaged on ice! A lasting memory.

It has been 15 years since then. Corner delis remain, but under pain of competition from a new generation of delivery alternatives like GoPuff and Getir that promise to deliver any item within 15 minutes, getting up off the sofa to walk half a block for some milk is a long past. One ingredient down for your dishes? No need to turn off your stove and put on your shoes! Instead, for a small fee, order a person to your door bearing a single can of chickpeas. LEGS NO MORE!

The downfall of old services , and the reversal(反转) of the consumption style are affecting the city landscape at all levels. As a multibillion dollar business, hyper- fast delivery is tearing at breakneck speed to make tiny delivery windows. It not only means more bikes on the streets, large areas of real estate(房地产) are being turned over to “dark stores” that you walk past every day but can only buy via an app once you’re home.

The threat to New York’s symbolic delis remains to be seen. Although nearly every business, from diners to bookshops, has closed their doors over the last 10 years, only the New York delis remain largely untouched. Still, the pressure must be intense.

Instant delivery is making us even lazier and more useless as people, of which I am not proud. Last week, when running out of milk, I ordered the delivery of a single coffee from Starbucks. I gave myself a pass because it was coffee. But if these things are quicker and more convenient, they’re also sadder and stripped of the bare minimum of human contact needed to hold neighbourhoods together. And, like so much innovation in technology, they can run counter to(与…背道而驰) the point of the very thing they enable.