Pants Hemming: Saturdays by the Ironing Board
Short Film: A Few Centimeters Shorter
Directed and Edited by Ben Qi
After my grandparents moved to Shenzhen, my father set up an ironing board every Saturday at four, hemming neighbors' trousers for free. At first I helped reluctantly — I thought it was too small to matter. I could speak to hundreds of students; he might hem two or three pairs an afternoon.
But after enough Saturdays, the "trivia" stopped feeling trivial. I met a grandmother who had sold her textile factory to accompany her daughter through school, a housekeeper who spoke candidly about education and work. Gradually I learned to mark hems, press fusible strips, and run the table myself. A resident picked up his trousers and said: "Nicely done."
The ironing board I once dismissed became my entrance into the community — understanding it by remembering concrete people, one by one.
