Chapter 12: Qiaojiao Beef

"Qiaojiao Beef?" Zhou Yan was slightly taken aback.

He was no stranger to this dish. If one were to talk about the most famous delicacies to emerge from Suji, Qiaojiao Beef was undoubtedly at the top of the list. It wasn't just a local specialty; even in Rongcheng, Qiaojiao Beef restaurants were everywhere.

A light, clear soup base paired with a dipping sauce, capable of flourishing all across the Bashu region—that alone was enough to show its uniqueness.

In his previous life, he had visited Suji and even interviewed two inheritors of the Qiaojiao Beef intangible cultural heritage.

Come to think of it, the origin of this dish lay right here in Niusha Zhou Village. It was said to have been invented by an ancestor of the Zhou family who was a butcher, though some also claimed it was invented by an old traditional Chinese medicine practitioner in Zhou Village.

He had two cousins who were currently selling Qiaojiao Beef at the Qingyi River wharf. During seasons when beef and beef offal were hard to sell, his mother would also go out to set up a stall; it was practically a traditional family craft.

Of course, he didn't know how to make it.

But now, he would know in an instant.

Most importantly, while others selling Qiaojiao Beef had to worry about how to source fresh ingredients, he could rely on his family—his old man was a direct supplier!

In the catering industry, ingredient supply was a crucial link.

With the backing of Niusha Zhou Village, he had absolutely no worries about running out of beef or offal.

"What are you spacing out for?" Zhao Tieying reached out and waved a hand in front of his eyes.

"It's nothing. Since there's no business anyway, I'm going to go lie down for a bit. I got up too early this morning." Zhou Yan smiled, stood up, and headed toward the stairs.

"Go ahead, I'll call you in a while." Zhao Tieying nodded.

The boy had been up since dawn buying groceries, stir-frying toppings, then kneading and pulling noodles—he must be exhausted. In the past, he would have been whining and complaining after doing even a little bit of work, but he hadn't made a peep these last two days. He was finally acting like a man.

Zhou Yan went upstairs and closed the door. Only then did he use his mind to click on the Qiaojiao Beef recipe. A massive amount of information flooded into his brain, and he froze for a moment.

Three minutes later, the clarity returned to Zhou Yan's eyes. With a flicker of thought, everything regarding Qiaojiao Beef had merged with his memory, as if he had mastered it all along.

"If it sells well, it'll be a decent growth point, and it basically won't affect the noodle sales," Zhou Yan pondered to himself.

Although the textile factory had over two thousand employees, few people would eat sixty-cent noodles every single day. He would be satisfied if he could sell a steady hundred bowls a day.

But he wasn't satisfied with only making thirty or forty yuan a day; he was quite free during lunch and dinner hours.

It was the end of October, and the weather would gradually turn cold. At such a time, a steaming pot of Qiaojiao Beef would become extremely attractive.

However, to sell Qiaojiao Beef, he would need the support of Old Comrade Zhou and Old Comrade Zhao.

...

"Zhou Momo is so cute, and Zhou Yan is quite an interesting person too," Xia Yao said, sitting on the back of the bicycle, one arm wrapped around Meng Anhe's waist as she smiled.

"Polite and mature for his age; he is quite interesting," Meng Anhe also smiled slightly, then quickly added, "However, you two might not be a good match."

"Huh?" Xia Yao was stunned for a moment, then immediately understood what Meng Anhe meant. A blush crept onto her cheeks, and she whispered urgently, "Auntie, what are you saying!"

"I'm just warning you. You mustn't let your heart get involved easily, or your mother will tear me apart." Meng Anhe looked back at her and said gently, "Zhou Yan saved you, and we will be grateful and repay him; you don't need to feel burdened.

You are going back to Hangzhou after graduation. With four thousand miles of mountains and rivers between you, he is opening a restaurant in this small town while you work and live in Hangzhou. It's unlikely you'll have any further dealings."

"I know, and I don't even have that in mind at all..." Xia Yao said helplessly. She hadn't thought in that direction at all; she just thought Zhou Momo was cute and that Zhou Yan was quite interesting.

"Then consider me overthinking it," Meng Anhe said with a smile. "I'm going to Rongcheng after lunch tomorrow; there are some things to handle at the design institute. I'll take you to downtown Jiaozhou on the way; the leave I got for you is also until tomorrow."

"Okay," Xia Yao replied.

...

By the time the lunch rush was mostly over, Old Comrade Zhou rode his "Twenty-Eight" bicycle to the shop, holding a small colorful pinwheel in his hand that spun rapidly in the wind.

Seeing this, Zhou Momo, who was sitting at the entrance, hopped and skipped toward him, muttering, "Pinwheel!"

Zhou Miao stopped the bike and handed the pinwheel to Zhou Momo.

"Thank you, Daddy!" Zhou Momo cheered happily, running around the shop entrance while clutching the pinwheel.

Zhou Miao stood by with his arms crossed, watching, a bright smile on his face.

"He's a total daughter-slave," Zhao Tieying complained to Zhou Yan inside the shop.

"For sure, I don't even get a turn," Zhou Yan nodded in deep agreement.

"You're how old now, and you still want to play with a pinwheel? Your skin is thicker than the corner of a city wall." Zhao Tieying laughed and patted his arm.

With no customers left in the shop, the family finally started their lunch. They had cooked rice today, served with a bowl of braised beef and a plate of minced beef with double peppers, accompanied by a dish of pickled radishes and some stir-fried greens.

"Is all the meat sold out?" Zhao Tieying asked casually.

"The meat is sold out. I let Zhou Jie take the offal to sell; he can move it with his soup pot business," Zhou Miao said, shoveling a mouthful of rice.

"That works, better than letting it rot in our hands," Zhao Tieying nodded.

Listening to their conversation, Zhou Yan felt a spark. "How is the Qiaojiao Beef business going for Brother Jie and the others?"

"It's alright. The weather is about to get cold, so business will be even better," Zhou Miao replied.

"How about we try selling Qiaojiao Beef too?" Zhou Yan took the opportunity to suggest.

"If you want to sell it, you could give it a try..." Zhou Miao hadn't finished his sentence.

"You've only just started seeing some improvement with the noodles, and now you want to sell soup pots too?" Zhao Tieying frowned. "The soup pot will indeed sell better when the weather gets cold, but most of the people who eat beef offal are the manual laborers down at the wharf. I went to sell it for a while during the winter these past two years, and I rarely saw textile factory workers come to eat it."

"That's right," Zhou Miao immediately agreed and nodded. "Zhou Jie and the others are just making some hard-earned money; they still have to take a loss when they can't sell it all."

Zhou Yan had already anticipated their reaction. He smiled and said, "When I was at the factory canteen, I learned a medicinal diet recipe. I plan to combine this medicinal diet with the soup pot. This way, the soup pot won't just be more delicious, but it will also have certain medicinal properties.

Also, from now on, we won't call it a 'soup pot.' In our shop, we'll call it Qiaojiao Beef. Our ancestors in Zhou Village invented this dish over a hundred years ago, and there was even an old traditional Chinese medicine practitioner who used to sell Qiaojiao Beef from a stall and improved the recipe. This way, we have both a heritage and a story."

"That works too?" Zhao Tieying and Zhou Miao exchanged glances, looking a bit bewildered.

"Of course. If we want to sell the soup pot at a higher price and make the workers fall in love with it, we have to tell a good story about the dish—from its historical origins and anecdotes to its lineage," Zhou Yan nodded confidently.

He had heard too many brand stories while filming shop-review videos, including those about Suji beef, so he already had a rough idea of how to tell a good brand story.

He wasn't good at cooking, but telling stories was his profession.

Adaptation wasn't fabrication; he was just organizing and retelling to help this dish gain fame earlier.

Zhao Tieying and Zhou Miao nodded thoughtfully. They didn't understand these things, but since Zhou Yan said he learned it from the factory canteen, it shouldn't be wrong.

"Then when we slaughter the cow tomorrow, I'll save the offal for you," Zhou Miao said.

"No need to save all of it. Just save me an extra half-pound of the rib-eye, and some tripe, beef intestine, and beef tendon. Send the rest to Brother Jie. We'll try boiling a pot tomorrow to see how it goes," Zhou Yan said with a serious expression. "If we really want to sell it, I plan to build a stove at the entrance specifically for boiling the Qiaojiao Beef. Once the scent drifts out, it'll be more effective than any advertisement."

"Alright," Zhou Miao nodded.

"Then I'll process the offal you need by the river tomorrow morning," Zhao Tieying said.

"Then I'll have to trouble you, Comrade Zhao Tieying," Zhou Yan said with a smile.

The unconditional trust and support from Comrade Zhao Tieying and Comrade Zhou Miao moved him deeply.

Guys, who understands? This is what it feels like to have a family!

In this life, he must work hard to make money, pay off his debts as soon as possible, reduce the pressure on his parents, and let them live a good life.

Zhou Yan went out with some money. The Qiaojiao Beef recipe he had obtained was the peak, improved version from the future.

In this era of 1984, where resources were scarce, most people were still struggling to just get enough to eat. However, some of the working class with stable jobs and decent incomes were gradually starting to pursue eating both enough and well.

As people's living standards continued to rise, their requirements for food quality were increasing day by day; this was an objective law.

From adding spices to remove the gamey smell, to adding traditional Chinese medicine to enhance the flavor, and then to nourishing the stomach, dispelling dampness and cold, and strengthening the body—all of this was a manifestation of catering to the diners' pursuit of eating well.

There were plenty of stalls selling Qiaojiao Beef in Suji Town and along the banks of the Qingyi River, ninety percent of which were opened by people from their Zhou Village. They had a daily supply of fresh offal, focusing on being cheap and plentiful.

If Zhou Yan wanted to sell Qiaojiao Beef at a higher price, he had to create differentiation. He would launch a dimensionality-reduction strike from three aspects: taste, texture, and efficacy, and he would also tell a good story.

He went to two old traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in town and weighed out over ten types of herbs, including dahurian angelica, long pepper, amomum fruit, amomum villosum, and galangal. The quantities weren't large, but it still cost him eight yuan and twenty cents.

Firstly, there were many varieties, and secondly, authentic traditional Chinese medicine was indeed expensive.

Seeing Zhou Yan return with several brown paper packages of herbs, Zhao Tieying asked with some confusion, "Are you not feeling well? Why buy so much medicine?"

"There's nothing wrong with my body. These herbs are to be added to the Qiaojiao Beef," Zhou Yan explained briefly.

Adding herbs to the Qiaojiao Beef was, firstly, to increase the flavor, and secondly, to add the medicinal benefits of the dish, thereby creating differentiation from the Qiaojiao Beef in other shops.

"It's fine to add some herbs, but not that many, right? And herbs are expensive. Even among the people in our village who sell soup pots, few actually add them," Zhao Tieying frowned. "If you add them like this, I'm afraid you'll lose money."

"I won't lose money. I have a plan," Zhou Yan said with confidence.

They finished work early that evening. The ninety bowls of noodles were sold out early, and Zhou Yan had to apologetically turn away several customers who wanted noodles, telling them to come earlier tomorrow.

His parents finished dinner and took Zhou Momo home.

Zhou Yan soaked the dried bamboo shoots, made another jar of pickled radishes, took a cold shower in the courtyard, and returned to his room early.

The room was very small. A five-watt light bulb barely lit it up. The rough walls were covered with sheets of yellowed old newspapers. One pane of the glass window was broken and patched with newspaper and tape, which was already peeling at the edges, letting the wind pour into the room through the gaps.

The bed consisted of a few wooden boards laid across two benches, uneven and lumpy. The mattress was a very thin, old, dark-colored quilt, passed down from who knows when, feeling hard and uncomfortable to lie on.

His pillow was a Xinhua Dictionary, and the quilt he covered himself with was also thin and not warm at all; he had to put his coat on top of the quilt to be able to sleep at night.

A bamboo pole hung with a rope served as a wardrobe, holding two shirts. Two pairs of pants were all his worldly possessions.

It was no exaggeration to describe it as "having nothing but four bare walls."

Little Zhou was a good comrade; he had spent all the money he borrowed on the essentials and hadn't enjoyed anything himself.

In his previous life, Zhou Yan had started as an orphan and was quite capable of enduring hardship.

But he hadn't expected that after finishing his own hardships, he would have to endure the hardships left behind by someone else.

What a sin!

Make money!

He was full of motivation now.

Only by making money could he break through these four bare walls.

Once he made money, he would get himself a Simmons mattress! Make a thick quilt with new cotton! Get a soft pillow! And fix the glass window!

No, no, that pursuit was still too low.

It should be a refrigerator, a television, a washing machine!

The pursuit of a better life should be a bit more advanced.

The box containing the money was on the bedside table. He opened the lid and started counting.

Today's income was 54 yuan, expenses for meat and greens were 15.3 yuan, and there was a balance of 35.5 yuan from yesterday. The cash on hand reached 74.2 yuan.

He had enough for the rent due tomorrow, and after paying it, there would still be some money left over, which could be used to expand the outdoor stove needed for the Qiaojiao Beef.

In addition, there was the fountain pen Xia Yao had given him, which still had ink inside. Zhou Yan casually unscrewed it and recorded today's accounts.

The expensive imported item not only looked exquisite, but it was indeed smoother to write with than his 90-cent plastic-barreled Hero 233 pen.

But what was she thinking, giving a chef a fountain pen?

What a strange girl.

He pulled the string on the bedside lamp, the tungsten filament went dark, and Zhou Yan fell asleep instantly.

The exhaustion from a day of hard work left him no time to think about those messy things; he felt like he had passed out from fatigue.

...

Early the next morning, before the sky was even bright, Master Little Zhou rode his "Twenty-Eight" bicycle out to buy groceries.

The slaughterhouse at the head of the weir had a few lights set up, barely illuminating the yard. Several butchers were busily slaughtering cows and dividing the meat.

"Zhou Yan!"

Just as Zhou Yan parked his bicycle, a loud voice rang out from behind him.

He turned around at the sound and saw two burly men carrying blood-stained knives walking toward him.