Toys are not always child's play
However, not all attachment is healthy.
According to a scientific report in Nature in 2017, adult patients with borderline personality disorders, frequently have attachments to inanimate transitional objects such as stuffed animals. It highlights the function of transitional objects for coping with anxiety about being abandoned by significant others and for dealing with depressive symptoms.
Zhu admits that some clients take their toys as lifelines and their stories of the toys have been heartbreaking.
"Once a man got his stuffed toy, he burst into tears and kept asking the toy 'why can't you talk?'" Zhu remembers.
"It is a physically and psychologically consuming work for an old man like me. Now I can repair only one toy every one or two months," Zhu says.
