Chapter 19

The little shop was going like a furnace.

The uncle's wife took the money and ran the food out and scribbled down what people wanted, no spring onion, no coriander, until her head swam.

Gi Hongcheng had wontons in one pot and noodles in another and the takeaway boxes as well, and he went round that kitchen like a spinning top.

The stallholders from the market came first, most of them taking it away, some carrying several orders back for other people. The numbers were manageable, and if he knew somebody they could talk while they waited.

Then the sky lightened, and the customers the stallholders had sent started arriving one after another. The place was not big, and before long every seat was taken.

Old Yang's dough stick shop had been there a dozen years. The food was ordinary and the value was good and it had plenty of regulars, so a fair number of people wandered over meaning to buy a couple of dough sticks, looked up at a brand new sign and remembered that the couple who used to fry them had gone off to the capital to enjoy themselves.

And in the next moment their noses twitched, and just as they were about to walk on, a smell stopped them dead.

Braising stock, bean sauce, sour and hot, all of it coming through the heavy draught curtain and spreading on the air with nothing in the way, so that every passer-by who had not eaten found their stomach answering. That sour note especially, set off by the stock and the sauce, worked like a pair of invisible hands pushing them gently towards the door.

They put a hand on their stomachs, told themselves they would only look, pushed the curtain aside, saw prices that were not bad, and decided they might as well order something and try it. Nothing lost either way.

So the customers kept coming. Young men and women out for an early run burn hot and are curious, and a new place is something to try at once. With the shop full they simply dragged out an old folding table and sat on plastic stools, and whether they knew each other or not, sharing a table made them friends for the duration.

The queue inside stayed orderly. The uncle's wife had not stopped once. She gulped some water for her throat and repeated, "One minced meat noodles, no spring onion, yes? One moment, it won't be long."

Gi Hongcheng set a bowl of noodles and a small dish on the hatch, with a braised egg in the dish, its shell cracked all over. "Bean sauce for table three."

Picking it up, she told him the new orders and asked, "Have we still got braised eggs?"

He fished about with a long spoon. "Yes. I'll tell you if we run out, and we'll give beancurd instead."

That pot of master stock was being shamefully underused on nothing but eggs and beancurd. He had meant to braise meat and was afraid braised pork noodles would be too heavy to sell first thing. After only a few hours he was confident enough to think that in another day or two there would be something new on.

Having got her answer she took the bean sauce to table three, and on the way back a new customer stopped her. She halted, delighted. "Uncle Yang. You've come too?"

Old Yang was often at the uncle's vegetable stall, so his face was familiar. He had timed it well. Somebody was settling up and leaving, and he got his bag of vegetables onto the seat in one movement. He was in no hurry to order. He took a pair of chopsticks and started on the pickled beans on the table, because he liked sour things and had eaten a great many pickled beans, good ones and bad ones, and he could tell with one bite whether anything had been put in them that should not have been.

Four Seasons had clearly pickled their own.

He crunched through them and a phrase arrived in his head of its own accord. Exactly right.

That was it. Exactly right.

The beans were cut to a sensible length and were not especially crisp, and in the mouth they had a definite chew. The sourness was judged well, it did not catch at the nose and it did not set your teeth on edge, and a faint heat went through it that made your mouth water.

There was a small spoon in the dish and he had not used it, only a clean pair of chopsticks for one mouthful, and that one mouthful told him the cook knew what he was doing.

He put the dish back and called the uncle's wife over, cheerful about it. "Hongguang's sister-in-law. A bowl of your minced meat noodles, I'm not fussy, and some braised beancurd."

She had no time for small talk. "Right you are, Uncle Yang, one moment."

He lived alone and had all the time in the world. "Take your time, I'm not in a hurry."

For all that, it was not long before she set it down. "Minced meat noodles with beancurd, and a braised egg on the house."

The noodles steamed, and the smell that came up was aggressive, with the sour out in front. He tried the meat first, chewed, and his eyes lit.

The spices in the meat had been used with restraint. The grains of meat stood apart, and there was diced mushroom, onion, carrot and potato in it, with wood ear cut into threads, so the texture kept changing. Chewing, he frowned, poked about in the bowl and found some small dice he could not place, bit one, and his face cleared.

King oyster mushroom, cut into strips, dried, then diced. With the water out of it the mushroom had a real chew, like meat without being meat, and it was the stroke that finished the picture.

When the bowl was empty he wiped his mouth. There was a thin film of sweat on his back, he had eaten nearly half the pickled beans on his own, and the egg and the beancurd had taken the stock all the way through and were good enough to make your eyebrows fall off.

Paying on his way out, Old Yang decided to come back tomorrow morning and try the bean sauce.

---

Ji Ran and Gi Changning brought the others across the road to the shop.

Young people are a rare sight on that street, and two rows of them in bright colours, obviously students and not yet out of their childhood faces, made an odd picture.

Gi Changning went first. She pushed the curtain aside and used her quickness to thread between people and tables all the way to the till.

The uncle's wife was taking an order there and jumped. "Ningning. What are you doing here?"

"I came to look." Gi Changning smiled apologetically, heard how hoarse she had gone and changed the subject. "Ranran's outside too. We've brought a lot of people. Can we help?"

"Absolutely not." Her first answer was no, and then she looked round at a small shop with no room left in it, and worried. "There's nowhere to put anyone. Why don't you take your friends somewhere else to eat?"

Gi Changning wheedled expertly and did not care who was watching. "Who goes out to eat when their own family has a shop? Let me bring them in to help and Dad can give them lunch after. How's that?"

Without waiting for an answer she went on, "Where are the spare tables? I'll have them carried out."

The reply came before she could stop it. "In the store room."

There was a small door past the till, a room that used to hold odds and ends. Once Gi Hongcheng had cleared out what was no use, the old shop's tables and stools and an awning had all gone in there.

With that, Gi Changning was off, and in no time she was leading a procession in like a gang boss.

The customers asked each other, "What's this?"

"There's a queue to order, you know."

Gi Hongcheng heard it, long spoon still in his hand. He knew perfectly well what sort of school his daughter attended, and that her classmates were each more delicately raised than the last, and could not possibly do heavy work.

Even at an ordinary school, they would still be children.

He had not had much education himself and felt an instinctive protectiveness towards students. The way he saw it, a student's job was to study, and what were they doing out here suffering in the cold? He was composing a stern face when a mask covered most of it, and the eyes left over could not manage stern on their own, and a boy behind Gi Changning greeted him like an old friend. "Hello, sir."

Zhou Shaoyu having opened, the rest followed one by one.

"Hello, sir. We're from Ning's, from Gi Changning's dance club."

"Hello, sir. We're in Ji Ran's class."

Ji Ran came last, put her head round and said it clearly, the way she had when she lived here. "Dad."

He nearly lost hold of himself. The long spoon shook slightly in his hand. He turned away and rubbed hard at his eyes, and under the mask the scars seemed to burn, and he could not keep the smile off. "Yes. Yes. You and Ningning. Really, you could have told me."

He grumbled with his eyes full of laughter. Since the parents' evening he had none of that old awkwardness in front of Wenyuan pupils, and only said, a bit shyly, "It's good of you all. Lunch is on me."

"It's nothing."

"Thank you!"

Seventeen and eighteen year olds have a great deal of morning in them, and these were well turned out and charming with it, and the customers who had been faintly annoyed were won over and cleared the middle of the floor to let them through.

The dance club looked thin and in fact carried a layer of muscle under their clothes, and with outdoor performances and school events they generally moved their own equipment, so tables and stools were nothing.

Outside, the folding awning went up under their combined efforts and the tables and stools were set out in rows, and those with nothing to do produced wet wipes from their pockets and cleaned every surface. Customers who knew each other sat together and the whole thing turned cheerful.

Once people were seated, Ji Ran handed out pens and paper and the others spread out between the tables taking orders carefully.

Their voices were clear, like a flock of larks, and passers-by got curious, and the quick ones among them had those passers-by seated before they could think better of it.

Ji Ran worked the till. Her memory was good and she did not need table numbers, only faces, to know what anyone had ordered.

Gi Changning ran the food. She had strength in her limbs, and several trips back and forth cost her less than one dance.

Zhou Shaoyu was the doorman. There was nothing else for it. He had come out in far too little and could only stand inside the door and shiver.

Xiao Xiao took a stack of flyers, and Miss Xiao had formidable professional abilities. One stack did not last her ten minutes.

Everyone had a job and the shop ran beautifully, and those with a moment spare talked to the customers and traded their own peculiar histories for admiring noises.

The uncle's wife, who had been run off her feet, was suddenly surplus, and went into the kitchen to help.

It was full of steam in there and the extractor roared.

She dropped wontons in and watched the students going back and forth through the hatch, envious and regretful at once. "Two daughters must be lovely. Why couldn't my Zhao have been a girl?"

Gi Hongcheng said nothing.

Something felt wrong to her. She went over and found him cooking noodles with a perfectly steady hand and a line of tears running down into his mask. She had no idea what to do. "Hongcheng? What are you crying for?"

"Nothing." He turned the noodles into a bowl and handed them out to Gi Changning, who was waiting. "I'm happy."

Well into middle age, life had finally come back round to him.

---

At ten in the morning he hung a closed sign on the door.

The uncle's wife went back to the market specially and brought fresh vegetables from their own stall, and a net of oranges for people to have before the meal.

The tables inside were pushed together into one long one, and the Wenyuan pupils peeled oranges with the smell from the kitchen winding round them, waiting hungrily for a lunch that was arriving early. The oranges were sharp and sweet and lovely, and somehow the more they ate the hungrier they got.

Gi Hongcheng could not bear to give growing students leftovers, and there were no leftovers to give, so he had each of them choose a dish and set about doing the thing properly.

Sweet and sour ribs, torn cabbage, blanched choy sum, dry-fried green beans.

The last was red-braised pork that had been going a long time in a clay pot, glossy, rich without being heavy, with quail eggs that had taken up all the flavour. As fine a dish of it as you could want.

Xiao Xiao swallowed a piece and felt the happiness arrive on her tongue, and wanted to ask whether he would consider a job at Linjiangxian. Then she looked at the scars on his face, and at the kindly way he was putting food into Ji Ran's and Gi Changning's bowls, and swallowed the question with the pork.

Better not to spoil the mood. Besides, she might be watching a restaurant brand come up out of the ground.

So thought Miss Xiao.

---

On a short video platform, a follower of Can't Tell N from L was shaking with excitement.

"Girls. People who get up early don't just get breakfast. They get to see NN."

The video had obviously been shot in a hurry, at a baffling angle and all over the place. All you could see was a quick figure carrying a tray with a mysterious step that had both dance and some sort of martial arts in it, setting the tray down on a table without a wobble, the whole thing smooth as water.

The comments were sympathetic.

"Has NN got so poor she's waiting tables?"

"She's performing for her supper, obviously. Look at those steps. Clean, sharp, steady."

"Performing for her supper, I'm dead."

"Sponsors, look at our Can't Tell N from L. Feed these children before they starve."

"That looks like where I live. Code word. P?"

The poster replied: "Yes! I run every morning. Today there was a crowd of gorgeous people in designer clothes working in this shop and it blinded me, and I couldn't help going in for a look, and then there was a handsome lad in a Burberry trench behind the door doing the doorman, and God knows when he said welcome I nearly dropped my phone."

"Is it some sort of rich people's charity scheme?"

"What's the weather like where you are? A trench coat?"

"I rose from my deathbed. Does this mean NN won't starve?"

"Thank heaven. NN doesn't have to perform for her supper. Weeping with relief."

"I'm different. I want to know whether the food is good."

The poster replied: "It's so good."

The poster replied: "I had a bowl of wontons and the freshness took my tongue off. First time I've understood that the cooking cartoons weren't lying. Pure happiness. Then I took some bean sauce noodles home, and I'll put it like this. I got them home, I did not get a single mouthful, and I have been given a solemn duty, which is to go and buy food from that shop every day."