Chapter 30

The three girls got off at the vegetable market stop, waited for the lights, crossed the road, and a few steps further on was the little restaurant.

The Four Seasons sign shone. Every so often Gi Changning's father got up a ladder and cleaned it until it gleamed. The way he put it, a sign is your face, and it is the first thing a customer sees, so you cannot be slack about it.

By April the weather was warming up, and he had put two awnings out in front of the shop with a few tables and chairs set out neatly underneath. There are a lot of hole-in-the-wall places near the vegetable market and plenty of people are used to eating outside, talking and putting the world to rights, and some of the older ones carry a radio around and would rather not sit inside at all. So the awnings, which had been for breakfast, were now used at lunch too.

It was Meng Lai's first visit.

In the winter holiday she had been fully occupied with relatives coming and going, and by the time she was free she had promised her mother a hundred in maths and had to work at it. Once term started there was even less time, because she comes home one weekend in two and has a lot of homework, and she and Gi Changning could never get a day to line up.

It is a fair way from the studio to the vegetable market, and it was lunchtime when they arrived. Four Seasons was busy, with customers sitting outside listening to opera on their phones, very comfortable. The weather was getting hot and the heavy draught curtain had been changed for a plastic bead one, which rattled like a wind chime when you pushed it aside.

The man waiting tables looked elderly and had a voice that carried, and he had everybody settled nicely. He turned at the sound of the beads, saw the boss's two daughters and nodded, smiling, and before he could speak the system announced that there was a new delivery order to be dealt with. So he went to the counter instead, wrote the order down and stuck it on the ledge of the hatch through to the kitchen. "Delivery. Two bean sauce noodles, one braised egg, one beancurd, one pickled beans, packed separately."

Yes. Four Seasons had started doing deliveries.

Her father called back from the kitchen, saw his daughters through the hatch and greeted them easily. "You're here. Tell Uncle Wang what you want and I'll have it done shortly."

Uncle Wang is the front of house and waiter he took on. He had not long retired. He has an upright face and a strong build and sharp eyes, and he is quick on his feet and misses nothing, and you would never guess he was past sixty.

Her father had put a notice up outside, and Uncle Wang, a regular, saw it and put himself forward. The way he told it, his wife was tired of having him under her feet at home, and he has no hobbies except a bit of boxing, and he told him that hiring somebody else was a worse idea than hiring him, and that he had no need of money and feeding him would do.

Her father was not about to take on a retired man, and turned him down politely, and Uncle Wang, seeing the place empty, picked up two tables at once, one in each hand, and recited a passage from the previous night's national news to show that his body was first rate and his memory outstanding and he would be no trouble to anybody.

And that is how Four Seasons came to have an elderly waiter.

Oddly enough, her father mentioned over dinner at home some time later that since Uncle Wang started, all the small-time troublemakers who used to hang about outside had gone.

Uncle Wang is good-tempered and smiles at everybody, though the smile is not an attractive one. A table had just left and he cleared it quickly and sat the three girls down. "Brought a friend, have you?"

Gi Changning sat beside Meng Lai and Ji Ran took the other side, and she showed Meng Lai the standing card with the menu on it. While Meng Lai read it, she and Ji Ran helped clear the bowls off the table.

"That's right," she said, grinning. "Brought her to broaden her mind."

Ji Ran talked to him as well. "How's the neck and shoulders, Uncle Wang?"

By the generations the two of them ought to call him Grandad, but he would not have it. He considers himself young and says everybody can use whatever they like and never mind the generations.

"Much better, thank you, Ranran." His neck and shoulders are bad, an old complaint from years bent over a desk. Ji Ran had given them a rub a couple of times and recommended a few plasters to use at home, and it was all perfectly ordinary and it really had made a difference. "That useless son of mine has posted me some beef. I'll bring it next time and get the boss to cook it, and you and Ningning can have a proper feed."

Gi Changning did not know whether to laugh. "Uncle Wang, your son will cry."

"Let him. He's on the other side of the Pacific and I can't see him anyway." He was entirely unrepentant. "Says it's some sort of wagyu and it's only good rare. He's doing it to annoy me. Am I short of a bit of beef? Better to let Boss Gi stew it in the old stock and I'll take it home for your auntie. She'd probably enjoy it more."

Wagyu, in the stewing pot. Uncle Wang had ideas.

The three girls silently raised their thumbs, ordered briskly, and Uncle Wang, thoroughly refreshed after a good complaint about his son, said, "Right. Won't be long."

Meng Lai watched him go. "If I'm built like that when I retire, I'll be the finest thing on the square-dancing circuit."

"You haven't sat your exams and you're thinking about retiring?"

"Not only that." Meng Lai was quite confident. "I've decided which sea my ashes are going in."

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

Was this really the conversation for mealtimes?

Just then the bead curtain rattled and somebody came in, looked round, found no free table and was about to order and eat outside, and on a passing glance saw Gi Changning. He came straight over, delighted. "Gi Changning?"

She was mid-conversation and looked up. "Zhou Shaoyu?"

It was.

Zhou Shaoyu, also known as the vanguard of fashion, celebrated champion of style over warmth. Mid-April, nearly Tomb Sweeping, the temperature neither hot nor cold and exactly right for spring clothes. He had on short sleeves with his jacket wide open so that nobody could miss the nebula and flame pattern on the shirt, and on his way to their table he turned deliberately on the spot so they could see the great qilin treading fire embroidered across the back of the jacket.

Anzhi's Fierce Flame, Blazing Sun. Zhou Shaoyu had evidently got hold of the first batch into the shops.

Before Gi Changning could say anything, somebody in the shop spotted the clothes and asked without ceremony, "Here, lad. Who makes what you're wearing?"

Being called lad pleased him enormously. "Anzhi. It's just out."

"Anzhi. I've bought their sportswear for years. Good quality."

"It looks smart. Do they do a women's one? I'd take my girl to get a set."

He might have been on commission. "They do, and it's lovely on a girl."

Seeing how young he was and guessing he was a student, the customer added, "You look very smart in it yourself."

Master Zhou floated higher still.

Gi Changning put on a face that could not bear to watch. "Zhou Shaoyu, you're displaying like a peacock."

That dropped him out of the clouds. The shop was full and the noodles were steaming and it was not breezy the way it was outside. He made a show of straightening a sleeve. "Gi Changning, I'd like to correct you. This is Chinese street style. It's fashion. Do you understand fashion?"

She put out a hand, palm up, in front of Ji Ran, without hurrying. "Here, Master Zhou. Open your eyes and see who this is."

Ji Ran blinked. "Hello?"

Zhou Shaoyu had nothing to say.

He knows the Ji daughter perfectly well, and he also knows the designer is Gi Changning's own mother. But Master Zhou is used to doing as he likes, and when he gets hold of something good he has to show it off. Having failed to show it off, he coughed twice. "I am your vice-president, when all's said and done. A bit of respect wouldn't hurt."

She cleared her throat and said, with great sincerity, "Your clothes look wonderful."

Which was true.

In the flesh they hit harder than the photographs, and the use of colour was close to miraculous. The nebula and flame shirt built a hazy nebula out of dreamy blue and purple, and the nebula made the shape of a flame, with a soft red worked in at the edges and stars glinting through it, so that one small shirt carried a corner of the universe, the way the sky looks when you tip your head back on a summer night with the wind going past.

The designer knows her business, Anzhi's factories do not let anybody down, the quality was what it always is, and the machine embroidery had real force in it and looked alive.

It would not be long before Chinese street style went down every street in the country.

And Zhou Shaoyu comes of three generations in media and grew up more or less inside a gilded world, and somehow came out with nerves of steel and nothing getting to him, and he is even louder and freer with himself than Gi Changning.

Even Gi Changning had to admit that the qilin and the flames suited him exactly.

Uncle Wang came over with a tray. Three bowls of noodles are not light and his arms did not waver by a hair. "Noodles."

Three kinds, three smells winding together. The minced meat noodles sour and hot, the shredded chicken fresh, the bean sauce deep and savoury, and one breath of it made your mouth water and your appetite open up.

Meng Lai had just danced herself into the ground and was starving, and the smell of the bean sauce finished off any politeness. "You talk among yourselves. I'm eating."

Seeing them all talking, Uncle Wang asked, curious, "You know each other?"

"We're in the same year." Zhou Shaoyu brazenly took a seat at their table and ordered like a man who had done it before. "Uncle Wang, one braised beef noodles, a braised chicken leg, a portion of braised pork and a beancurd. Thanks."

Uncle Wang has a good memory and repeated it back for confirmation. "Right you are. Won't be long, young Zhou."

"Young Zhou?" Gi Changning put her chin in her hand. "Master Zhou. How do you know the drill so well?"

"I'm a regular." He was very pleased about it, and put his hands together to ask Ji Ran to pass him the jar of pickled beans off the table. He got the lid off, poked about in it with the little spoon that lives in it, and called out, "We're out of pickled beans again."

Uncle Wang came over, took the jar and carried it off to the kitchen to be refilled.

He came back with a bowl of beef noodles and no jar. "I'll bring the beans over when they're packed."

The braised beef noodles came steaming. The beef was soft and the smell came up at you, and the pieces sat trembling on top of snow-white noodles with a pinch of bright green spring onion over them. The honesty of it was enough to move you.

Her father picks fresh beef shin in the morning, cuts it into even pieces and stews it slowly in a crock with a range of spices until every thread of the meat has taken the spice up.

The smell took over every corner of the shop in a second.

Customers' noses twitched. "That smells good."

When braised beef noodles first went on the menu he thought the price was on the high side and that it might not sell, and he did not prepare much beef. On the day it launched Zhou Shaoyu happened to walk in, and Master Zhou, who is not short of money, ordered it without a thought, and when it came out the smell went from the kitchen to the street and pulled in a steady line of customers, and that day they could hardly make it fast enough. When the beef ran out he had to come out and apologise and tell people to come early tomorrow. And that is how braised beef noodles became one of the things Four Seasons is known for.

A minute later, with no new customers coming in, he snatched a gap, filled the jar right up with pickled beans and brought it out himself and set it on their table.

Gi Changning stopped squabbling. "Dad?"

Ji Ran said it too. "Dad."

Meng Lai, with a smear of sauce at the corner of her mouth, said sweetly, "Hello, Uncle."

Zhou Shaoyu was not going to be left out. "Hello, Uncle Gi."

"Hello, hello, all of you." He had his mask on and his eyes crinkled, and you could see he was very pleased. "What brings you over today?"

Gi Changning elbowed Meng Lai. "Meng Lai owes us hotpot, so we thought we'd come here instead."

Meng Lai thumped her own chest. "Don't worry. This whole table goes on my account."

"Nonsense." He laughed. "It's on me. Don't stand on ceremony."

"Ceremony has to be stood on a bit." Meng Lai looked troubled. "If you won't take it, what happens when Ranran stops coaching me?"

Ji Ran, chewing shredded chicken that was not in the least dry, answered calmly, "The coaching will continue. You'll just be buried in geometry."

Meng Lai looked more troubled still. "Uncle. For my sake. Take the money."

The three of them made him smile, and he gave way. "Next time, then. Come without those two and I'll treat you."

That pleased her. "Right. I'm holding you to that."

Zhou Shaoyu, who was taking up a quarter of the table, finally got his pickled beans, dug out a heaped spoonful and put it on his noodles. He was in no hurry with the noodles. He ate a mouthful of pickle first, with great satisfaction, crunching away.

"Uncle Gi, your pickled beans are something else." He sighed over it without his hand pausing, and dug out another spoonful. "If you could make them at scale. I'm going abroad to study later this year, and if I could take a jar of yours with me I'd down a stargazy pie in one."

He had not lowered his voice, and the customers who knew what a stargazy pie is began coughing in sequence.

Her father did not know what one was. By the name it sounded like some signature dish from abroad, or perhaps the staple. He looked at Zhou Shaoyu, still a boy and about to go overseas to school on his own, and said, "Tell me before you go and I'll put a small jar up for you to take."

He was tempted, and then sagged. "I'd love to, but a jar's hard to carry. If there were vacuum packs I'd buy ten pounds and sit on them."

Hm. Vacuum packs?

Something went off behind his eyes. "Uncle Gi. Have you ever thought about doing ready-to-eat?"

The more he thought about it the better it got. He abandoned his food and started waving his hands about. "The kind of pickle you open and eat. You supply the recipe, find investment and build a plant, and grow from there. You know my family are in media. We'll get one of our artists to be the face of it, and say I sent you and get twenty per cent off."

Master Zhou was splendid about it. "Let's set a modest target. Say, up there with Lao Gan Ma."

Her father did not rush to argue. It was not that he agreed. It was that he looked at Zhou Shaoyu the way you look at a child, took it entirely as a boy's talk and did not take any of it in. He has no great ambitions. He wants a restaurant. His largest wish is to take the place next door next year and knock through, and in time to earn enough to buy a place of his own and settle the family properly. He did not want to disappoint the boy, so he played along. "Right. And when I turn up at your door, don't pretend you don't know me."

"As if I would."

Uncle Wang, listening in, worked his mouth and then said, "You know, Boss Gi, the lad's idea isn't bad. If you're short of money I'll have that useless son of mine invest."

Her father did not know what to do with him. "Uncle Wang. A man your age, egging the children on."

Customers came in just then and he went back to the kitchen, and on his way past Uncle Wang he said quietly in his ear, "I've put some braised beef aside for you. Have it when the rush is over."

Uncle Wang beamed and forgot the whole conversation. "Right you are."