Clear soup, like a flowing stream.
A sky-blue pot with raised white magnolia flowers on the outside.
Floating inside are two white bamboo mushrooms, resembling two flowers, with fresh, thin strips of bamboo shoots settled at the bottom.
It was Xiao Qi's first time tasting it. With a sip of the soup, he felt a refreshing sweetness fill his lungs, making him feel rejuvenated.
Who would have thought that bamboo shoots could be prepared this way? Gumula Village, where Xiao Qi lived, had an abundance of bamboo shoots because there were many bamboo forests in the mountains. The season for bamboo shoot production was from winter to the Qingming Festival in spring.
Bamboo shoots accounted for a significant portion of the villagers' annual income in Gumula Village. Winter shoots were fresh and spring shoots were sweet. Winter shoots were not easy to find as they were mostly hidden beneath the ground. One had to observe the terrain and study the cracks in the ground, just like searching for matsutake mushrooms, in order to find them. Skillful villagers could dig up around ten jin of winter shoots in a day, but the prices were high. Some people in the village would buy them, and the price would be five to six yuan per jin.
Spring shoots were abundant everywhere, and there was no time to pick them all. As a result, the prices were low, dropping to as low as five to six fen per jin. For the villagers, it was labor-intensive work. They would carry a hundred jin of spring shoots from the mountains to the village collection point, earning only fifty to sixty yuan. Those with great strength could make four trips to the mountain in a day. However, during the spring season, it rained every day, and the mountain road was muddy. They had to carry one or two hundred jin of bamboo shoots from deep in the mountains to the village. It was extremely tiring.
Xiao Qi was the kind of person who would trip even when walking on an empty road without carrying anything.
Bamboo shoots were the most frequently eaten dish in Xiao Qi's memory. Spring shoots were cheap, and if they couldn't be sold in time, people in the village would smoke and dry them directly on the mountain by building a bamboo shoot drying kiln and burning firewood. The smoked and dried bamboo shoots could be preserved for a longer time. Stir-fried dried bamboo shoots with meat was an excellent dish to accompany rice.
Throughout the spring, the dining table at home almost always had bamboo shoots.
But today, the taste was completely different. It was August, and they didn't know where the fresh shoots came from, but they were incredibly crisp and tender.
Xiao Qi had a big appetite. He finished the entire pot of soup in one gulp, mainly because he thought the pot was beautiful. It seemed large, but there was actually only a small bowl's worth of content inside.
Liang Jiajia picked and ate the contents of the pot, leaving most of the soup.
After a while, a waiter came to take away the pot and set up new tableware. Then, a new dish was served.
"Green Lotus Lion's Head," the waiter announced.
Xiao Qi saw a transparent glass bowl, not the smooth kind, but one with hammered wrinkles on the sides that seemed to emit light. Inside were two pieces of emerald green lettuce leaves, with a meatball lying in the middle.
The meatball was the lion's head. When he took a bite, he could feel both fatty and lean meat, as well as a slightly sweet and crispy taste. Xiao Qi finished it as instructed and then ate the lettuce, which had soaked up the soup. Surprisingly, it wasn't too old and had a crunchy, fresh sweetness.
Liang Jiajia saw that Xiao Qi was enjoying his meal and started recording a video again.
However, she was also busy eating, so she just placed her phone on the table.
The process continued as before, and Xiao Qi felt quite hungry. There were waiting times in between, and he didn't feel completely satisfied with the food.
Each time a new dish arrived, there was always a sense of astonishment. The third dish was porridge, millet and pumpkin porridge, with a small sea cucumber inside.
Xiao Qi was having sea cucumber for the first time. It looked prickly, like a black hairy caterpillar.
She didn't feel scared, though. In Gumula Village, there was another specialty dish called bee larvae. It was deep-fried, and when Xiao Qi was young and didn't understand, she was tricked into eating a lot of it. They said it was high in protein and would burst in your mouth. But as she grew up, she didn't dare to eat it anymore, although she would still come across it.
Sea cucumber didn't have much taste, it was like jelly, chewy but not sticky. Surprisingly, the porridge was sweet, with sugar added. Xiao Qi didn't particularly like sweet porridge, and the combination with the sea cucumber tasted a bit strange. But she followed the principle of not wasting food and finished it all.
Liang Jiajia, on the other hand, always left some of each dish. She judged by taste, leaving more of some and less of others. She barely took a bite of the lion's head meatball, saying she didn't like fatty meat.
After finishing the porridge, they finally had meat, a pan-fried steak.
It seemed like this was the main course, quite a portion for girls, three small pieces about half a finger thick.
Xiao Qi had tried the steak at Haoxiang before, it was a thin portion that cost several tens of yuan. Auntie took her and Feifei there to eat.
She thought the steak would be tough, being so thick, but to her surprise, it was very tender when she bit into it, and there was juice, which was very appetizing.
She even thought it tasted better than the previous dishes.
Liang Jiajia noticed that Xiao Qi, her little teacher, looked very good while eating, not restrained at all. Especially when eating the steak, she seemed like someone who ate it regularly, handling the knife and fork skillfully. Liang Jiajia was somewhat curious.
Because her taste buds were more sensitive, her sense of smell was also sharper. Things that smelled bad or tasted bad would be more painful for her, while eating delicious food and smelling the aroma would become an indescribable pleasure, very enjoyable.
Next, they brought a pear on a turquoise plate. Xiao Qi thought it was just a pear, but then she saw Liang Jiajia pick up the twig on top of the pear. There was actually a lid on top of the pear, and when she lifted it, half of it was a transparent pear cooked with rock sugar, and the other half was like vermicelli, which the waiter said was bird's nest.
She had never eaten bird's nest before, so naturally she couldn't tell if it was real or not, but this dessert was sweet but not cloying, very refreshing. Liang Jiajia liked this dish very much and finished it all.
Xiao Qi finished almost every dish, so this dessert was easily consumed as well.
The dishes were served one by one, and the meal took nearly two hours. Although each portion was small, just a handful, there were twelve dishes in total.
Xiao Qi remembered that the three hundred yuan set menu had eight dishes, and there were sets priced at six hundred and eight hundred yuan, with sixteen and eighteen dishes respectively.
Xiao Qi went out for a moment in the middle, and Liang Jiajia thought she had gone to the restroom and didn't pay much attention.
Xiao Qi did go to the restroom, and inside there was actually an old big drum, bright red with some peeling on the surface, looking a bit scary. But on top of the drum, there were fresh flowers.
The restroom was filled with a pleasant fragrance, not the slightest bit smelly.
Xiao Qi asked the waiter how to pay as soon as she came out. The waiter led her to the bar, and she mentioned the room number. Surprisingly, they gave her a 20% discount, and the total came to eight hundred yuan.
After paying the bill, Xiao Qi felt more at ease. In fact, she didn't have much experience of treating others to a meal, so she wasn't sure when to pay or if she should pay first.
When she returned, she felt much more relaxed. She listened to her student, Liang Jiajia, chattering away, "This restaurant is owned by my mom's friend, so we get a discount. My mom said the things here are not considered expensive at this price."
Xiao Qi agreed. You get what you pay for. She walked into a small shop and randomly ordered some dishes for a meal, which cost more than a hundred yuan. The food was greasy, and some of the dishes were not cooked properly. Not to mention the exquisite presentation like here.
Listening to the sound of flowing water outside and the gentle classical music playing in the background, it was very comfortable and enjoyable to have a meal here.
The only downside was that the tables and chairs were formal and hard. Perhaps it was to encourage customers to savor the food seriously. After finishing the meal, Xiao Qi felt full and sleepy. She really wanted to find a sofa to take a nap.
If she had the chance, she would love to bring her parents here for a meal.
But considering her parents' spending habits and her current situation, it felt like it would be a long time before that happened.
Liang Jiajia was enjoying her meal. When it was time to pay, she found out that her teacher had already paid. Her mom had a membership card here, which had a lot of money in it. All she had to do was deduct the amount. Xiao Qi smiled and said, "It's delicious, and we even got a discount. It's great."
Liang Jiajia felt a bit guilty for the first time. She had intended to treat her teacher to a meal, but ended up getting a free meal instead.
But after spending the whole morning with her teacher, she had to go back. She said goodbye to her teacher.
Xiao Qi returned to the dormitory for a nap at the hospital. She ate too much and felt drowsy. As she sat on the bus, she was nodding off. A middle-aged lady who took the bus every day recognized her as the girl who gave up her seat to a pregnant woman and got injured. Seeing her dozing off in the seat, the lady smiled and thought, "She's a young girl. The bus is crowded at noon. I'll stand by her side and make sure she doesn't fall."
