On the food street shortly after six in the morning, many breakfast stalls were surrounded by crowds, three layers deep inside and out.
Only Qiao Man’s food cart remained as quiet as a deserted doorway.
Qiao Man wasn’t in a hurry. She still had her share of the earnings from Xiong Mei and Qi Dongmei’s business. Combined with the money she had saved recently, if the beef noodle shop didn’t raise its price, she would be able to pay the rent before the New Year. However, redecorating and buying equipment and furniture would still cost a significant amount.
Qiao Man broke off a piece of a soup dumpling and popped it into her mouth. Today’s meat was indeed excellent—the fat-to-lean ratio was just right, and the filling held together in a firm ball. It was just that the flour still wasn’t quite ideal for soup dumplings; the gluten was too strong, making it less fluffy than she’d like.
In truth, only a palate like Qiao Man’s could detect such things. Ordinary diners really couldn’t taste such subtle differences.
As she was slowly savoring it to find the flaws, a thin, middle-aged woman wearing a heavy padded coat and a safety helmet ran over. She stood before the stall, looking at the menu board with hesitation.
Qiao Man stood up and asked, “Sister, would you like some soup dumplings? Fresh meat soup dumplings, right out of the steamer.”
The woman’s face was dark and reddened from exposure to the wind and sun. Qiao Man could tell she was embarrassed, so she took the initiative to ask.
“Boss, I don’t read many characters. Are these soup dumplings 15 yuan for 6?” Jin Laidi spoke in somewhat broken Mandarin with a raspy voice, but she tried her best to keep it gentle.
Actually, Jin Laidi regretted asking a bit after the words left her mouth. She had only run over because she heard that Qiao Man was raising a child alone and wasn’t having it easy, and her daughter, Xiao Jiao, loved soup dumplings.
Qiao Man saw her hesitation and said, “You’re my first order for the opening today. I’ll give you a discount—ten yuan for a steamer.”
Jin Laidi’s eyes lit up at the mention of a discount. She hurriedly unbuttoned her padded coat and pulled a somewhat dirty ten-yuan bill from an inner pocket, placing it into the cash box.
Qiao Man sighed inwardly and told herself: Just this once. Like Qiao Ya said, it’s for good luck—a ‘red’ start. She wouldn’t be soft-hearted so easily in the future; she had to survive, too.
She added four extra soup dumplings to the plastic bag.
“Boss, this…” Jin Laidi watched Qiao Man put in four more dumplings and thought she had miscounted.
Qiao Man smiled at her. “Take them. If they taste good, come back next time.”
Jin Laidi realized the boss was intentionally looking out for her. Her face flushed red, and she kept whispering “thank you” over and over.
She tucked the bag of dumplings inside her padded coat, looked up at Qiao Man with a beaming smile, and then hurried off to catch the bus to the west of the city to find her daughter.
Buns are only good when they’re hot!
After Jin Laidi left, a few more workers arrived at Qiao Man’s stall. They were dressed similarly to Jin Laidi; clearly, they were from the same construction site.
They asked bluntly, “Little boss, how much for the soup dumplings?”
Qiao Man was currently rolling out the skins for shaomai. Shaomai skins are different from dumplings; you have to use the rolling pin to create a frilled edge.
She looked up, continued rolling, and replied, “Fifteen for a steamer, six per steamer. No bargaining.”
“Didn’t you just sell them to that woman for ten?!”
They had been watching from afar. Not only did this little boss give that woman a cheaper price, she gave her extra!
It hurt them to not get the same deal!
Qiao Man knew they weren’t sincere about buying buns. She looked up at them coldly. The men who were about to make a fuss and perhaps call her “little wife” instantly fell silent—in the apocalypse, Qiao Man had killed people.
At that moment, the Porridge Sister noticed something was wrong and used a mix of coaxing and scolding to give them a way out.
No matter how much they looked down on a young girl, they knew that once someone reached a point of having nothing to lose, they feared nothing. Besides, the Criminal Investigation Detachment was right behind them. It wasn’t worth causing trouble over a bun.
The group shuffled away. Qiao Man acted as if nothing had happened and went back to rolling shaomai skins.
Northern shaomai are filled entirely with meat, usually mutton or beef. They have thin skins and large fillings, being tender and juicy—somewhat like Jiangnan’s meat buns, but with much thinner skins.
The edges of the dough are frilled, the meat filling is bundled inside, and with a firm squeeze of the thumb and forefinger, a pomegranate-shaped shaomai appears in the palm. The dough at the top is thin and translucent, looking like a flower once steamed.
It’s best to eat this kind of shaomai sitting quietly in a shop. When they’re steaming hot, you use chopsticks to lift them by the narrowest part, dip them in a bit of vinegar, blow on them, and take a bite. A burst of juice floods out. Then, another bite reaches the meat filling—that’s what you call fresh and fragrant.
When the juice falls onto the vinegar in the saucer and congeals into droplets of oil, you realize it’s not just soup—it’s mutton fat!
As Qiao Man wrapped the shaomai, she thought that she really needed a shop soon. Bringing these back and reheating them would naturally make the taste much worse.
The mutton in Jiang City was sourced from the grasslands, and the local people loved eating sheep. Good mutton isn’t gamey; it has a milky fragrance.
Qiao Man had specifically ordered her supply from a reputable mutton boss before she dared to sell mutton shaomai. The locals were experts at eating sheep; she was truly afraid of ruining her reputation.
She also prepared Sticky Rice Meat Shaomai, which people in the South enjoy. After all, they are large and filling, and not as heavy as the mutton ones.
The fat from the fresh meat soaked through the sticky rice, and the aroma of the sugar-and-oil mixture directly awakened people’s morning appetites.
After those few workers left, not many people dared to approach Qiao Man. The rest either found it too expensive or were too intimidated to come over.
Qiao Man set a stack of fresh meat soup dumpling steamers to keep warm on one side of the stove, while on the other side, she heated three steamers of mutton shaomai and three of sticky rice meat shaomai.
During this time, the Porridge Sister came over again. She told Qiao Man not to struggle alone if anything happened and to call her immediately. She also “helped” by sampling a sticky rice meat shaomai. Her eyes lit up as she ate, her previous bad mood vanishing instantly. She immediately pre-ordered two steamers: “My daughter went to university in Jiangnan, and she absolutely loves the sticky rice shaomai there. Since she came back, we haven’t found any fresh-wrapped ones here; we could only buy those frozen ones online. I was always worried about the quality. This is perfect!”
The sister stuffed money into Qiao Man’s hand and sighed again, “With your skills, you really should open a shop. Setting up a stall here is a waste of talent. When I get home today, I’ll tell your brother-in-law to ask his master. We definitely won’t let him raise the price!”
This was exactly the effect Qiao Man wanted. She gave the sister an extra fresh meat soup dumpling and returned to the cart.
Just as she got back in, she saw a man standing in front of the cart.
Calling him a man was a stretch; he was more like a kid, looking like a college student.
He wore only a black windbreaker and didn’t seem to feel the cold, but his expression was listless, his shoulders slumped, and the dark circles under his eyes were nearly touching the ground. When Qiao Man arrived, he was staring blankly at the price list on the cart.
“What can I get for you?”
“Huh?” The boy finally realized the boss had returned. He took a deep breath and scratched his head sheepishly. “I just smelled something really good, and my feet walked over here on their own. What is that amazing smell?”
Qiao Man was amused. One look told her this person had pulled an all-nighter; his eyes were blurry, and his brain wasn’t quite functioning.
Since there were no other customers, she wasn’t annoyed and explained one by one: “Right now, for soup dumplings, there’s only fresh meat. For shaomai, there are two kinds: sticky rice meat, and pure mutton.”
The boy’s face grew even paler at the mention of “meat.” As if remembering something, he forced back an urge to vomit. After a moment, he frowned and asked Qiao Man, “Boss, do you have any vegetarian ones?”
Qiao Man shook her head. “The vegetarian ones will take a bit longer, but there isn’t much meat in the sticky rice meat ones.”
The boy’s shoulders slumped further, disappointment written all over his face. He thanked Qiao Man and prepared to leave.
But just as he turned, his stomach gave a loud growl, and his feet seemed pinned to the ground.
Qiao Man felt helpless. Seeing how pitiful he looked, she pulled a box from under the counter. “The vegetarian fillings are just fennel and egg or mixed vegetables. If you can wait, I’ll wrap a steamer for you now. It’ll take about ten minutes.”
The boy instantly perked up, leaning against the food cart and nodding vigorously. “I want one steamer of each, then!”
He leaned closer to the cart than before. The aroma from the stove made his stomach growl even louder. He gritted his teeth. “Actually, give me a steamer of the sticky rice meat ones too!”
The sticky rice meat shaomai came four to a steamer. Qiao Man had priced them at ten yuan a steamer to accommodate office workers and the elderly. They were very filling; most people would be satisfied with one or two, and any more would be too heavy. However, these didn’t mind being cooled and reheated; they had a different kind of good flavor then.
Qiao Man first packed a steamer of sticky rice meat for him and then briskly began wrapping the vegetarian soup dumplings.
The boy smelled the shaomai in his hand and couldn’t help himself. He leaned in for a sniff—it was okay, no urge to vomit. He popped a small piece into his mouth. Sure enough, his mouth was full of sticky rice.
Besides the sticky rice, he really couldn’t detect much of a meat sensation. But the feeling was quite wonderful; he didn’t chew any meat, yet his whole mouth was filled with the fragrance of meat. The mildness of the sticky rice perfectly balanced the greasiness of the meat, making it a very comfortable meal for the boy.
These sticky rice meat shaomai weren’t just fragrant; they made him feel less nauseous.
Just as the boy was about to praise the boss for the shaomai, he looked up and saw the boss holding a stack of dumpling skins and rolling them out at lightning speed—there must have been ten skins in that stack! Was the boss from a circus?!
Before he could react, the boss had expertly finished wrapping the soup dumplings, arranged them in the steamer one by one, and put them on the stove to steam.
This was the first time he had ever seen someone wrap buns like that!
Qiao Man was used to it. She could wrap six hundred large buns in an hour. Professional masters were even more impressive; this was nothing.
The boy walked toward the food street as if he were floating, carrying three bags. He was still in a daze when he entered the beef noodle shop, only to be stopped by a familiar voice: “Oh, Xiao Zhao, at the internet cafe all night again?”
The boy turned and saw Jiang Feng and Gao Dong sitting in the corner. Seeing the luggage next to Gao Dong, he finally snapped out of it and ran over excitedly, sitting down quickly: “Brother Dong, you’re back! Staying for the New Year? Brother Jiang Feng, you’re back too! Any business trips before the New Year? I told you not to call me Xiao Zhao. Man, I’ve really missed you two!”
It was Jiang Feng who had called out to Shi Xiaozhao. Seeing him carrying several bags, he leaned in and saw they were buns. He asked, “How many days has it been since you’ve eaten? Buying buns and then coming here for noodles. Doesn’t the internet cafe provide food?”
“You guys don’t understand. I followed my nose to find these buns. They’re delicious.” Shi Xiaozhao casually handed each of them a mixed vegetable soup dumpling; he wasn’t particularly fond of that filling.
Gao Dong refused; he still didn’t want to eat anything that had been over-processed outside.
Jiang Feng, however, took one and said, “That dog nose of yours is still as sharp as ever.”
Shi Xiaozhao remembered the events of last night, and his face turned sour. He lowered his voice and said, “Don’t talk about it. Didn’t my dad arrange for me to intern at the local police station? Last night we encountered a homicide. A mother and daughter—their heads were both… sigh, blood was flowing out from under the door. It was the first time I’d ever seen a scene like that… uugh!”
Gao Dong threw down his chopsticks and stopped eating his beef noodles. Although he was a doctor, he treated the living; he had never seen anything so cruel.
Jiang Feng, however, popped the entire soup dumpling into his mouth. After two chews, he suddenly paused and said, “Something’s not right.”
Shi Xiaozhao looked up blankly, and Gao Dong looked at him too: “What’s not right? Brother Jiang Feng, do you know about this case?”
Had the Criminal Investigation Detachment been alerted so quickly?!
Jiang Feng chewed the dumpling two more times. Only after swallowing slowly did he say: “The bun isn’t right.”
“…”
West of the city, at the girls’ dormitory of Jiang City University.
Hu Jiao ran to the entrance of the cafeteria to meet her roommates.
Her roommate, Fangfang, asked her, “Taking orders for others again and not buying anything for yourself?”
Hu Jiao smiled. “I don’t have much of an appetite in the morning.”
Fangfang was the only one who knew about Hu Jiao’s family situation. She sighed and didn’t press further. “I bought two baked buns with tenderloin this morning and can’t finish them. Help me eat one.”
Hu Jiao knew Fangfang’s good intentions—this wasn’t the first time she had helped. She shook her head in refusal. “I know you haven’t had enough to eat. Let’s go.”
She was indeed working her way through school and had a job outside, and she skipped breakfast to save money, but she was still happy—her mother had finally escaped that drunken, domestic-abusing man. Mother and daughter would definitely be doing better and better from now on!
Fangfang still couldn’t bear it and forced the bun into Hu Jiao’s hand. “If you don’t eat it, I’ll throw it away! Hehe, let me borrow your notes to copy later—”
“I’ll tutor you instead,” Hu Jiao said, unable to refuse further.
The two looked at each other and smiled, eating as they walked.
Fangfang sighed, “I feel like the cafeteria’s buns are getting worse and worse. It used to be pork tenderloin, but now they dismiss us with two pieces of chicken. The meat is dry and has a fishy smell.”
Hu Jiao ate slowly; she actually thought it was okay.
Fangfang sighed, “You can’t go on like this; your body will break down. It’s one thing to hide it from our roommates, but I think you should tell the counselor about your family situation.”
Hu Jiao took the words to heart this time. She also wanted her mother to not be so tired—at the very least, she shouldn’t have to be on a construction site twisting steel bars.
When they reached the classroom, Hu Jiao had just sat down when a classmate ran in: “Hu Jiao, your mother is downstairs looking for you!”