Chapter 36

Ji Ran's father knows exactly how busy Four Seasons is, so he set off deliberately late and arrived at the tail end of the lunch hour.

Sure enough, only a few tables were still occupied, and the only sound was the automatic announcement about new delivery orders going round and round.

Uncle Wang had been washing up in the kitchen, and pushed the cloth curtain aside at the sound of somebody coming, laughed when he saw who it was and looked past him. "It's Xuejun. Changfeng not with you?"

He was evidently a regular. He picked a table and waved Qian Dajin into a seat, and said cheerfully, "Something's come up at the company and Changfeng's dealing with it. But I've brought an old friend."

Qian Dajin was still in his suit and did not fit the room at all. He took the jacket off without a word and loosened his tie, and put the bodhi beads on the table, and Uncle Wang saw them and asked, "Is your friend a Buddhist, Xuejun?"

He set the record straight. "He is not. And he was born in the year of the pig, so anything edible will do."

Qian Dajin was outraged. "Ji Xuejun, that is slander."

Though he is not a Buddhist. He had a filthy temper when he was young and it cost him a great deal, and after enough beatings from the world somebody told him to read sutras to settle himself. The beads came off a night market for a hundred and fifty, and whether they are bodhi at all is anybody's guess, and he has worn them for twenty years and never replaced them, and whenever he feels like losing his temper he gets them out and works them round twice.

Gi Changning's father heard a voice he knew and put his head out of the kitchen. "You're here. What will you have? There's one portion of beef left today. Braised beef noodles?"

At one portion left, Qian Dajin forgot everything else and said loudly, "I'll have the braised beef noodles. Ji Xuejun isn't getting any."

He stopped for a second, and his eyes went to Ji Ran's father.

"Qian Dajin, you're more childish than my nephew." His nephew is young Liang Shuo, so he was pointing out that a man of that age was worse than a primary school child. He nodded to Gi Changning's father. "The beef goes to this old thing. I'll have the bean sauce noodles, if that's all right."

Watching the two of them pecking at each other with neither of them the least bit angry, he gathered they really were friends. His mask was on and there was no reading his face, and above it his eyes crinkled. "That's fine. A few minutes."

"Thank you."

"Not at all."

Order given, Qian Dajin chewed it over, then lowered his voice. "Ji Xuejun. Is that your daughter's dad? No, Ningning's dad? And what about Ranran?"

Qian Dajin is among the better informed about the swapped daughters. He and Ji Xuejun have twenty years behind them, and when the chairman is low or when something happens at home and he is afraid that talking to anybody else would cost him his dignity, he waits until the small hours and rings Qian Dajin.

So of everything that has gone wrong in that household, Qian Dajin knows a third if not half.

"That's the father of both my daughters." He was very pleased about it. A delivery rider came in for an order and brought a draught with him, and the plastic bead curtain twisted as he went in and out and slowly untwisted again and dropped a neat row of shadows. Ji Xuejun looked like an old man with a secret, and tried for modesty and produced a grin that shut his eyes entirely. "I never told you. Just after the new year, Ningning called me Dad. And before she went off to the arts coaching she kept coming over to see Ranran, and she stayed a night in her old room."

Qian Dajin's interest was caught. "So your Ranran goes between the two houses as well?"

"She does, she does." There was nothing forced about his face. He is very happy with the way things stand. "When the shop opened, Ranran came over to help."

Qian Dajin pictured it and clicked his tongue. "I must say. It's rather remarkable. Is there really no bad feeling between the two households?"

"Qian Dajin, can you not think well of me for once?" He rolled his eyes. "I can't thank them fast enough."

Qian Dajin slid the beads onto his wrist. "Go on."

"Never mind how well they brought the girls up. Take this business of the leaked designs and nearly missing the whole range." He tapped the table with the pad of his finger, and his eyes went over the kitchen without appearing to. "You wanted to know who Shanqing is. She's Ningning's own mother."

Qian Dajin leaned back so hard he nearly went over, because Four Seasons has benches rather than chairs. Astonished past a certain point he went very calm instead, and out of everything going through his head came one line. "Ji Xuejun, what sort of dog's luck is that?"

Honestly, Qian Dajin had always thought his luck was bad.

A wife dead in middle age. His mother dead. All but estranged from his daughter. Something close to line manager and subordinate with his son. More than half a lifetime gone and then the daughter turning out to be the wrong one. Saying he had no luck with family was an insult to the word.

And then, near retirement, he lets go of things, gets easier with his son, learns to look after his household, has the business turn a corner, and ends up with something like two daughters. There is no accounting for it.

Fierce Flame, Blazing Sun has had nothing but praise since it launched, the shops have run out more than once, and it has set off a wave of Chinese street style, with the smaller labels and the copyists all trying to imitate it and none of them able to catch what the real thing has.

Qian Dajin knew Anzhi wanted a new trend line, and the range had laid a very handsome foundation for it.

Uncle Wang came over with a tray and set two steaming bowls down, and a smell with real authority in it cut Qian Dajin's thinking off. His nose moved and his eyes went to the noodles without his permission, and his mouth watered, and his hand went to the chopsticks.

Ji Xuejun laughed at him without mercy for having seen nothing of the world. "Lost for words? Braised beef is what the place is known for. Do you know what known for means?"

Qian Dajin might not have heard him. He had come a thousand miles to Pingchuan and been too anxious at first to eat, and by mealtimes he had gone past hunger. Contracts are a nuisance and want weighing word by word, and over Tomb Sweeping he had found time to go back to the country and sweep his family's graves.

For days, Anzhi and his people had gone over the contract on one side, while on the other the business crowd in Pingchuan heard he was in town and laid on a good deal of entertaining, and at least everybody knew where the line was over Tomb Sweeping. It was hard on Qian Dajin, who had not had many proper meals, and now the dark red beef and the smell of complicated spices set his stomach going audibly. The noodles and the meat came together into one thread that went into every pore of him, and he gave up, took the chopsticks, gave it a rough stir and shovelled beef and noodles in together.

Noodles straight out of the pot are very hot. Qian Dajin is weathered and used to rough handling, and after a few quick breaths and some work with his teeth a mouthful of hot noodles went down and warmed a stomach that had been empty all morning. He swallowed. "That's better."

The beef was seasoned exactly right and perfect with noodles that were smooth and had some bite in them. Qian Dajin has eaten good beef, slaughtered and grilled the same day with no seasoning at all, the most basic taste of beef filling your mouth and showing you a wide country and a great fire.

Four Seasons uses ordinary beef shin, every thread of it carrying a smell that does not shout over anything, soft at exactly the right point, with nothing off about it and the juices locked inside. Eating it put him in a second back in his home village, sitting in a cramped house with plenty of warmth in it, listening to his parents bickering, and sometimes they came to blows and they were always careful to keep it away from the child who was eating.

It tasted of home.

On the other side of the table Ji Xuejun stirred his bean sauce through until every noodle was coated, then reached for the jar with the ease of practice and spooned pickled beans in. Where the savoury sauce and the sour heat met, something danced on the tongue.

A few mouthfuls in, half Qian Dajin's bowl was gone, and he had eaten too fast and felt it, so he took one piece of beef on its own and chewed it a long time. "Ji Xuejun. When we were young, if that certain Master's braised beef noodles had had beef this size in them."

"An ugly man with handsome ideas." He swallowed, and pointed at the menu on the table so Qian Dajin could look at the prices. "If they ever put in one piece of meat that size, they'd add a nought to the price of a packet."

That was when Qian Dajin looked at the menu. He picked up the card and studied it. "That's not dear at all. Beef is dear on its own, and there's that much of it. Ji Xuejun, I'll tell you this. If this bowl were at the hotel I'm staying in, they'd have the nerve to charge three hundred."

Ji Xuejun looked up, saw Gi Changning's father coming over, and called out, "He says this bowl is worth three hundred. Don't let him off."

Gi Changning's father had nothing to say.

Qian Dajin had nothing to say.

He sat down at the table across the gangway. With summer coming the kitchen gets hot, and he had on a T-shirt his wife had brought home, except that the apron covered the design on the front and all you could see was the Anzhi logo on the label at the back of the neck.

Anybody who cared to look could see, through a round neck, the burn running from his back up to his cheek, and when a draught lifted the hem you could see the great terrible stretches of it across his back, and wonder what kind of accident does that much damage.

And he no longer takes any trouble to hide the scars. Through the mask you could hear the smile. "Right. I'll put it on your friend's account."

Ji Xuejun had nothing to say.

It was Qian Dajin's turn to sit up. "Well done, boss. Your day has come, Ji Xuejun."

He laughed. "What brings you today?"

"One, to show this old thing something of the world." Ji Xuejun lifted his chin at Qian Dajin. "And two, I remembered something I'd forgotten to tell you."

He leaned forward slightly. "What?"

"When Ningning started middle school I donated a building to Wenyuan. The high school takes its own middle school students straight through, so Ningning doesn't pay fees. She's into her third year after the summer, and I was afraid you didn't know."

He thought of what Wenyuan costs, and said urgently, "That won't do."

"Why won't it? Am I an outsider again?" Having turned that round on him, he added, with feeling, "Why do you think a girl who thinks she comes second to nothing but the sky could break school rules that many times and not be expelled? I put in a sports field afterwards."

Qian Dajin was enjoying this enormously. He drank some soup and put out a hand to calm Gi Changning's father. "I'm two years older than Ji Xuejun, so I'll take the liberty of calling you brother as well. Let me put it plainly. Ningning's mother more or less saved the Anzhi brand. Two buildings is nothing. Call it fleecing a rich man."

"Qian Dajin. The way you talk."

Qian Dajin was unimpressed. "Normal people all talk to you like that."

Gi Changning's father had nothing to say.

There was no getting a word in.

"Although." Qian Dajin, having mocked enough, took the beads off and played with them. "Seriously, Ji Xuejun. Aren't you going to invest?"

He was lost. "Invest in what?"

Qian Dajin tapped his bowl. "This. Have you heard of self-heating food?"

He put his chopsticks down. "Meaning?"

Qian Dajin made room on his bench and pushed his bowl along, and waved Gi Changning's father over to sit beside him. "The self-heating market has only just started and it's chaos out there. This bowl of beef noodles sells for thirty-five in the shop. Halve the meat, hold the taste, sell it for twenty, and I guarantee it goes off like a rocket. If it doesn't sell I'll eat it, heating pack and all."

Uncle Wang had finished clearing a table and caught the end of it. "Isn't self-heating food mostly army rations at the moment?"

"You know the field." Qian Dajin was impressed. "That's right. Life gets better, so convenience food ought to get better too. People always say the thing doesn't look like the picture. What happens to your name when the thing looks exactly like the picture?"

Uncle Wang thought about it. "Boss. Remember what young Zhou said?"

He worked out who young Zhou was. "The one who wanted to be up there with Lao Gan Ma?"

Before Uncle Wang could answer, Qian Dajin got excited. "Never mind Lao Gan Ma. We go past that certain Master."

Gi Changning's father certainly knows the name of that certain Master, and it alarmed him. "Don't make fun of me. I'm a cook. I've got a shop and I'm content with it."

A factory. He truly could not imagine it.

"It isn't making fun." Qian Dajin pointed at himself, and then at Ji Xuejun. "I didn't finish middle school. I met Ji Xuejun on a pitch at a night market. I haven't even got a trade. I just happened to come along at the right time."

Zhou Shaoyu's version had been talk, and in his view Zhou Shaoyu is a boy, and you do not take a boy seriously. Ji Xuejun is another matter. Ji Xuejun has a large brand behind him. He had no idea what Qian Dajin did, and a man who sits down to business with Ji Xuejun must be doing very well.

Thinking it, he felt his own heart going fast. Not long ago he would have been content if any restaurant had taken him on as a cook. A shop of his own was unthinkable, let alone a factory.

He thought of his wife's face since she changed her work, and how much younger it had got, and an ambition he had not felt in years began to put out a shoot.

"And the main thing is." Qian Dajin could see the movement in his eyes and began dreaming on credit. "If there's a factory, would you look at the west? There's room out there and the beef is exceptional, and at the moment the policy is in your favour and there's tax relief. Think about it."

Ji Xuejun let out a long breath, to stop himself putting a bowl on Qian Dajin's head, and seriously wondered how a man who expects rain the moment he hears wind had built the biggest cotton operation in the country. He tapped the table to bring everybody back. "Here's what we'll do. I'll have Ji Changfeng look at the market and put a report in. If it stands up, I'll invest."

Qian Dajin came down off it, patted his own head and privately laughed at himself for still being that impulsive at his age. "Work both ends. Have Changfeng look into it, and meanwhile get the logo and the patents and every certificate you can apply for applied for. No harm done if it comes to nothing. Though I'm never in Pingchuan and I don't know what the provincial policy is like. You're the chairman, you can take the lot on."

Before he could answer, Uncle Wang slowly draped the cloth he had been wiping tables with over his arm. "Provincial policy. I know it well."

---

Time turned over, and the May holiday came.

Gi Changning and Meng Lai had been at the arts coaching school a matter of days and got a holiday out of it.

The school had not had a break since the new year, Tomb Sweeping included, and thinking the students needed to unwind they gave the whole holiday at once. So Gi Changning and Meng Lai packed up and went home.

Not that they were idle over it. They gathered at Jinhua Gardens and got Ji Ran, who was also off, to coach them in maths.

In the study on the first floor the three of them sat round the desk, Ji Ran doing homework and the other two doing a paper.

Silence, and nothing but pens on paper.

Gi Changning nudged Meng Lai with her knee, and when she looked over, raised an eyebrow.

Meng Lai propped an arm up to hide her face, and her legs under the table misbehaved, and she got a shoe against Gi Changning's foot and pushed her back.

Gi Changning narrowed her eyes and put an arm out sideways on purpose to squeeze Meng Lai's territory.

Meng Lai lifted a hand without hesitation and put it down on Gi Changning's arm.

Ji Ran, who could see all of it, coughed.

Both of them instantly sat very still and looked pious, and wrote working out on their scrap paper as if none of that had happened.

Two minutes, and Gi Changning could not sit still and started signalling again.

Ji Ran put her pen down, caught the ringleader and asked, unhurried, "Gi Changning. Would you mind not making me cross?"

Gi Changning blinked guiltily, and her pen got away from her and drew a curve across the scrap paper, and her mouth held out. "Ranran. So you can get cross."

"I can." There was no sign of it on her at all. "Unless you tell me what all the looks are about."

Gi Changning and Meng Lai glanced at each other at all the looks, and shivered. Meng Lai cracked first. "Gi Changning wants to invite you to something and she's too embarrassed, so she wants me to say it."

Ji Ran did not follow. "Is it that difficult?"

"It's not difficult, I was worried about your schoolwork." Gi Changning was unusually shy about it. "The short video platform is putting on a dance programme and they've invited Meng Lai and me to be guest performers on an episode. Rehearsal and recording tomorrow, at the broadcasting centre in town. I want you to come and watch us."

Ji Ran's face opened and she smiled. "I'd like that."

And seeing the two of them slap palms with delight, she added, "I'm looking forward to it."