Early that morning, Jiang Xiaoyu went to the docks and bought quite a lot of fish and shrimp that didn’t require ration coupons. Qian Chunmei brought the workers over, and since the three families were all starting construction at the same time, they discussed cooking together at her house to feed the workers.
“Xiaoyu, keep track of all the money and ration coupons you spend on food,” Qian Chunmei said. “The three families will split it evenly afterward. I’ll bring over a few bundles of firewood after work tonight too.”
“Alright.” Jiang Xiaoyu pointed at the proper-sized fish she had bought and said, “When I went to the docks today, the fishermen were already trading their reserved fish for grain coupons.”
This kind of thing had happened before. The fishermen on the island didn’t receive extra grain rations. Fish this size were supposed to be handed over to the fisheries department, so the amount they could keep for themselves was already limited. Most families preferred exchanging them for grain coupons to buy more food.
Normally, people ate little fish and shrimp at home, but building a house was a major matter. No one dared mistreat the workers’ meals.
Qian Chunmei thought it made sense. Feeding the workers better would make them work faster anyway. She turned to Aunt Hua for her opinion.
“What do you think, Auntie?”
Aunt Hua nodded. “If we don’t use grain coupons to trade, then the little fish coupons we get would be gone in one meal. Next month, every family can switch some fine grains for coarse grains and tighten our belts for a month. We just have to get through these ten or so days of construction. With the meals Xiaoyu’s making, I bet these side rooms will be finished in ten days.”
The three families all agreed.
As soon as the workers arrived and saw the fish and shrimp laid out beneath the eaves, the foreman immediately smiled and called everyone to begin measuring the foundations. The workers became noticeably more energetic.
Building new rooms was a major event, and several waves of neighbors came over to watch. Everyone already knew that the families had volunteered to adopt children first, and only afterward were they allowed to add side rooms for the children to live in. Aside from feeling envious, no one could really criticize them.
But once they saw the ingredients Jiang Xiaoyu had prepared, they were shocked.
If they ate like this every day for ten or fifteen days straight, wouldn’t it bankrupt them?
Jiang Xiaoyu laughed. “Building houses is hard physical labor. If people don’t eat enough, where will they get the strength to work? If the masters eat well and work faster, Wangzhou and the others can move in sooner. It’s all for the children, right, Aunties?”
The foreman overheard her and immediately turned around to shout at the workers.
“You all hear that? It’s all for the children, so work harder!”
Meanwhile, Jiang Xiaoyu busied herself with cooking. The children crowded around helping her light the fire and boil water, so everything went quickly.
Out of the six fish, two were stewed with tofu into a huge basin of soup. The other four were grilled, then transferred into smaller iron pots over charcoal braziers together with radish, kelp, and other vegetables until the pots were completely full.
On top of that, she made braised shrimp, spicy stir fried clams, and several vegetable dishes. Every dish filled either a large bowl or platter.
The eight workers sat at one table, while Jiang Xiaoyu, Aunt Hua, Ke Xiu, and the six children sat at another.
“Master Wu, this is the best I could come up with,” Jiang Xiaoyu said modestly. “Sorry if the hospitality isn’t enough, but there’s plenty of cornbread buns. Eat your fill today, and tomorrow I’ll think of something different. I’ll try not to repeat dishes.”
“Little sister, you’re incredible,” the foreman praised sincerely. “I’ve never seen anyone this skilled at cooking.”
He had attended luxurious banquets before, but none smelled as delicious as this meal. Just breathing in the aroma made his stomach rumble. Then he glanced at the neighboring table. The dishes there were identical, only the portions were half-sized. The workers’ table had everything served in huge basins.
The hosts were generous people.
At that point, how could they possibly not work wholeheartedly?
Once they took the first bite, no one could stop eating.
Fish and shrimp weren’t unusual for people living by the sea. Every household ate them several times a month, yet none of them had ever tasted flavors like this before. Even the vegetables and radishes somehow tasted completely different from normal. And the cold kelp salad, how had she seasoned it so well?
The combination of soup, meat, and vegetables was perfectly balanced. The workers devoured everything like a whirlwind, not even leaving a single drop of soup behind.
Then they looked over at the women and children’s table.
That table was equally spotless.
The foreman honestly wanted to drag out the construction for a few extra days just so he could keep tasting food like this. But after eating such a feast, how could they slack off? The workers pushed themselves even harder that afternoon.
Later, Jiang Xiaoyu boiled a huge pot of sweet potato sugar water. Hard labor drained energy quickly, and drinking something sweet helped people recover. Even the children each drank half a bowl.
A whole two liang of white sugar had gone into that single pot. One jin of sugar reserves would only last five days like this. Either they stopped making sugar water entirely, or they would need to keep doing it every day.
Jiang Xiaoyu had just started considering borrowing sugar coupons to buy more sugar when Ke Xiu brought over another jin of white sugar.
Ke Xiu laughed secretly. “My mother-in-law said you don’t know how to manage a household. You made such a lavish table of food and now you’re boiling sugar water too. She also said that once this jin of white sugar is gone, she absolutely won’t give you the jin of brown sugar she’s hiding.”
Jiang Xiaoyu laughed. “That brown sugar is for your postpartum recovery. Even if she offered it to me, I wouldn’t take it.”
With the extra sugar, there was no need to borrow coupons after all. Still, that evening Qian Chunmei delivered sugar coupons anyway, saying one jin per family was just right.
When Mu Chengfeng came home and saw the half-meter-deep foundations already dug and packed down beside both their house and the neighboring one, he was shocked.
“Did Director Jiang’s side room progress this fast too?”
Aunt Hua walked over, still grumbling angrily. “Your wife is too honest. Six sea fish over two jin each, more than three jin of shrimp, half a bucket of clams, and a whole basket of vegetables from my yard. Then she even boiled sweet potato sugar water this afternoon using two liang of white sugar. If the workers still didn’t work hard after all that, it’d really be disgraceful.”
Jiang Xiaoyu hurriedly defended herself. “We ate a third of it ourselves too. The children were so satisfied.”
Ke Xiu quickly added, “I was satisfied too. The baby in my belly was happy as well.”
Aunt Hua’s heart ached. They had eaten this extravagantly on the very first day. How were they supposed to manage the remaining ten or more days? How many grain coupons would that cost?
Jiang Xiaoyu immediately reassured her. “Tomorrow’s ingredients won’t need grain or meat coupons.”
Mu Chengfeng asked what she planned to buy tomorrow, but Jiang Xiaoyu refused to tell him.
“If I say it out loud, everyone will stop me from buying it.”
“Don’t listen to Aunt Hua,” Mu Chengfeng said. “Buy whatever you want. Our family can contribute an extra share.”
“That won’t do. I finally found two wonderful neighbors. Aunt Hua means well. People of her generation are naturally frugal.” Jiang Xiaoyu actually turned around and comforted him instead, telling him not to worry.
After cooking lunch and making sugar water all afternoon, anyone could see she must be exhausted. Mu Chengfeng rolled up his sleeves.
“Rest for a while. I’ll cook dinner.”
Jiang Xiaoyu practically jumped in alarm and snatched the apron away from him.
Those hands of his were made for holding surgical scalpels. They were so beautiful. He might handle a scalpel steadily, but who knew if he could even chop vegetables? What if he cut himself? How would he perform surgery tomorrow?
“No need, no need. If you feel bad about it, then wash the dishes after dinner.”
Mu Chengfeng silently stepped aside.
Besides building the new side room, they also had to renovate one of the old rooms. The house was already a complete mess, so that night he simply planned to sleep at the kindergarten again.
Wei Mancang was going too.
Aunt Hua couldn’t understand it. “Xiaoyu’s whole family is already going. There’s no need for you to go too.”
Wei Mancang explained, “Me going represents my attitude. I want Xiaojun to know his new family values him very much. Children at his age are sensitive and suspicious. We have to take care of his emotions.”
Ke Xiu nodded in agreement. “Exactly, Mom. Last night you told Mancang to deliver fish and meat over there, and today Xiaojun came by to sweep the yard and gather firewood. Tonight was already Mancang’s turn to stay over anyway, so of course he should go.”
Aunt Hua muttered helplessly, “Fine, fine. I can’t argue with you two.”
Jiang Xiaoyu had worked as a kindergarten teacher before, so she carried countless stories in her head. Unfortunately, many of them couldn’t be told in this era. So instead, she began recounting Journey to the West from the very first chapter, a story she knew by heart.
The children, both big and small, listened in complete fascination. Even at ten o’clock, they still refused to sleep.
Jiang Xiaoyu told them she had to leave before dawn tomorrow to buy groceries, so she truly couldn’t stay up late. She promised to come back to the kindergarten tomorrow night and continue with the next chapter, and only then did the children reluctantly go to sleep.
Wei Mancang was full of admiration.
“Mu Chengfeng, your wife is incredible with children. You really married the right person.”
Mu Chengfeng silently thought the same.
His wife could soothe children, cook delicious meals, and care for him attentively. The only problem was the way she treated him felt oddly similar to how his intern doctors treated him.
Yes, that was it.
She was simply too polite.
…
Before dawn the next morning, Jiang Xiaoyu ran to the meat processing factory and came back carrying a whole bucket of pork offal. She had specially gotten approval papers signed by the director, and the factory had practically sold the organs to her at half price. She had even arranged to come back tomorrow for ten pig trotters.
The moment Aunt Hua saw the bucket of offal, she almost fainted from the smell.
“Xiaoyu, are you crazy? You’re serving pork offal to the workers? At this rate, forget half a month, the construction might not even finish in twenty days!”
Jiang Xiaoyu grinned mischievously. “Auntie, you’d better stop talking now, otherwise later you’ll be too embarrassed to eat it.”
Aunt Hua truly couldn’t stand the smell. It was so overpowering she didn’t dare approach any closer.
At this point, she could only trust Jiang Xiaoyu.
Soon, the workers arrived full of anticipation. But when they saw the giant bucket of fresh pork offal beneath the eaves, their expressions immediately stiffened.
Yesterday they praised the young wife of the household. Apparently they had praised her too early.
One impatient worker complained to the foreman, “Brother Wu, yesterday there was fish and shrimp. Why is it pork offal today? Even if meat is hard to buy, the docks sell buckets of tiny fish and shrimp. There’s no need to fool us with offal.”
The foreman remained calm. “Let’s wait and see. Keep your hands moving quickly. Don’t slack off now only to find out later the hosts made something delicious.”
“How could pork offal possibly taste good? Have any of you ever eaten delicious pork intestines before?”
“Just listen to the foreman. Maybe she really can make it taste good.”
At last, the spices Jiang Xiaoyu bought during her big shopping trip finally came into use.
The reason people in the 1950s and 60s couldn’t make good offal dishes was because ordinary households lacked seasonings. Most homes only had salt for flavoring. Of course pork intestines couldn’t taste good that way. Besides, who had the time to spend half a day making a dish where the seasonings cost more than the ingredients themselves?
Damei was so overwhelmed by the smell of the intestines that she couldn’t get close, so Jiang Xiaoyu sent her to boil water instead. Second Sister, on the other hand, didn’t mind the smell at all.
Jiang Xiaoyu taught her, Xiaojun, and Qingshan how to turn the intestines inside out and tear away the fat.
Even Qingshan couldn’t endure the odor. Halfway through, he ran outside dry heaving, then came back with paper stuffed into his nostrils before continuing to wash the offal.
After blanching the organs in boiling water, it was finally time to braise them.
Jiang Xiaoyu took out the expensive yellow wine she had been reluctant to open and poured in a generous ladleful to remove the gaminess. Then she wrapped cinnamon bark, bay leaves, star anise, dried tangerine peel, and other spices in cheesecloth before tossing the bundle into the pot.
Once the water boiled for ten minutes, she had Damei remove a few pieces of firewood so the pot could simmer slowly over a gentle flame.
After simmering for an hour, the fragrance had already drifted far away. Several neighbors wandered over asking what she was cooking and why it smelled so unbelievably good.
The workers were suffering even more.
“Do you smell that? Pork intestines can smell like this? I only ate one coarse bun this morning because I wanted to save room for lunch. I’m starving so badly my chest is sticking to my back. When are we eating?”
The foreman glanced at the sun overhead. In summer they started work at dawn, so it was probably only around nine o’clock.
“When it’s time to eat, they’ll naturally call us. Stop embarrassing yourself and keep working.”
Everyone sped up their work even more.
Surely once the hosts saw how hard they were working and how fast the progress was, they’d serve lunch earlier, right?
The smell was simply too torturous.
The anticipation of lunch dangled before them like a carrot, driving everyone to work desperately hard.
No one knew how much time had passed. The workers were so hungry they felt all their strength draining away when, at last, they heard a voice that sounded like heavenly music.
“Masters, it’s time to eat!”