eat, dance, love

On an ordinary early summer afternoon, I was playing cards with my poker friends on the street.I'm lucky, winning money again and again, and the WeChat payment QR code is placed on the table for people to transfer money.

At this time, my apprentice Zheng Jiabao rolled towards me stepping on the shade of a tree.His belly and thighs were short, his upper body swayed as he ran, and he looked like a wide-mouthed bowl with a hill of food.

After finally rolling to me, he raised his head and squinted his eyes, panting and said: "Brother Xu, there is a heavenly customer in the store, and he wants to eat Beijing cuisine, which we don't even know how to cook. Uncle asked me to come to you!"

"How celestial is it?" Before I could even open my mouth, someone else started booing.

Zheng Jiabao gestured to me, and said in a tangled up voice, "B-better than Brother Xu..."

Everyone booed even more: "Can anyone be prettier than Xu?"

"Really!" Zheng Jiabao nodded earnestly, and racked his brains to find a bunch of adjectives to describe that "celestial guest". Everyone expressed surprise and asked me to go back and have a look.

Seeing that the WeChat transfer has almost been received, I picked up the phone: "Then go back and serve the angel's guests!"

Actually, I’m not that gossip, I don’t care much about what this customer looks like, I just care about why this person went to a seafood stall to order Beijing dishes.

Thanks to the hard work and shrewdness of my stepfather Zheng Zhiming, our family has become a famous "big enterprise" of chain restaurants in Haibao Town—there are four restaurants in the whole town.Anyone who comes to Haibao Town to enjoy seaside farmhouse tourism will come to our store for a meal.

But our four restaurants are seafood stalls, Cantonese restaurants, Guiliu-style restaurants, and Hunan-style restaurants. Where can anyone order Beijing dishes?This guest was either really not satisfied with his taste, or he was deliberately finding fault.

If Zheng Jiabao hadn't used the adjective "heavenly fairy", I would have guessed that the other party was a troublesome competitor.

But our Haibao has a radius of five hundred miles and eighteen towns. I can't imagine that there is anyone who is more immortal than me.

Therefore, those who can be described by this word must not be people from here.

In the end, it was really not someone from here—but I would never have imagined that it would be Gu Yu, a person who lived in my memory and on the screen of my mobile phone.

He in real life looks better than the photos I usually see on his Weibo, better than on TV, better than the Internet.It's also prettier than I remember.

Tiao Shunpan is beautiful, red lips and white teeth smile like the morning sun, sword eyebrows and star eyes are shining, black T-shirt and black pants make his slightly slender figure beautiful and clear, more than ten years of classical dance experience has shaped his feminine temperament, Blurred his gender.

He sat at the table with his elbows resting on his cheeks, and looked up at me from the side.After waiting for so long, I was neither anxious nor angry, my expression was clean and my eyes were clear, and my smile softened my heart.

"Are you the chef?" he asked me.

I froze, realizing he didn't recognize me.

Also, 16 years ago, it was just a one-sided relationship. He was the winning side, and he was innocent, bright and lovable.And I was a piece of luggage dragged by the loser Pei Yanya, squatting next to the huge shit-yellow suitcase, almost invisible.

The difference between sky and abyss, the difference between clouds and mud, how could he remember me?

I came back to my senses, restrained my astonishment, recalled the posture I saw for the first time, and smiled happily: "Yes, yes, I am the one who handles the important dishes in the store."

His eyes lingered on my face for a moment, then looked me up and down, unscrupulously, but he didn't feel offended at all, on the contrary, he enjoyed being looked at by him.

He said, "Do all the chefs here grow up like you?"

He was actually accosting me.If it were said by a fat old man, it would definitely look vulgar, but when he said it, it was like a teenager acting like a spoiled child unconsciously.

He always does, I thought.

He was just as I imagined, I thought again.

——I shouldn't be so familiar with him, but thanks to my old mother, I really know him too well.

I raised my eyebrows and followed his accusation: "Obviously impossible."

He said: "You look so good-looking, I don't believe you can cook delicious food."

I looked into his eyes, deliberately smiled softly, and said in a loving and helpless tone to the vexatious child, "If you want to strike up a conversation more, then it doesn't matter if my cooking skills are good or not."

He laughed and said, "I'm sorry, it's the first time I strike up a conversation, and my skills are not good enough. You can laugh at me."

It's always inappropriate to flirt with customers. I straightened my face and said seriously: "I heard that you want to eat Beijing cuisine. We rarely have this in the south coast. I lived in Beijing when I was a child. It is still my mother's family heirloom. I can cook a little." .What would you like to eat?"

He tilted his head and asked, "What can you do?"

I thought for a while and said, "Explosive tripe is not good, there is no tripe. Steamed donkey meat is not good, there is no donkey. The conditions of roast duck do not match, it is not authentic. The sauced elbow is not good, it is too time-consuming..."

"Then what?"

"...Zhajiang noodles?"

"..."

He frowned, probably thinking that I was perfunctory.The customer is God. I hastily put on a sincere expression and explained: "What I just said, if you insist on eating, I can also try my best to prepare the ingredients, and I can serve you dinner, but I really can't do it right now. Moreover, these It's all big meat, for you dancers..."

"Did you see that I'm a dancer?" His eyes lit up, and his mood switched instantly.

I nodded: "I can see it."

He was very happy, as if he didn't care about me being unable to do this or that, and easily showed some intimacy: "I'm a dancer, and I usually pay attention to what I eat. Recently, I have been on a diet too much. The doctor told me that I had anorexia. I always resisted eating, even if I was hungry, I would rather bear it than eat.”

He has anorexia.I know that too.When I checked his Weibo for the first time and saw it, I typed "That must be because the food you encountered was not good enough", but in the end I deleted it and didn't post it.

Now I say this to him face to face: "It's because those things are not tasty enough to melt your psychological resistance."

"Then can you make something I'd like to eat?" He put down his hand and raised his face to look at me.

I said, "Do your best."

So I went into the kitchen to make noodles for him.

I am a northerner myself, and I will never forget the taste of food left on my taste buds in my childhood. I usually either don’t eat northern food, or I have to eat something “authentic”.Coincidentally, this morning I pulled two catties of hand-rolled noodles, which came in handy now.

To make Zha Jiang Noodles in Beijing, you need to use Liubiju’s yellow sauce, which I don’t have on hand.Moreover, Gu Yu's situation required higher and more exciting temptations, otherwise he would not be able to let go of his psychological resistance and take the first bite.

So when I used it to make the sauce, I added the spicy flavor that people in Sichuan and Hunan like, and used the spicy aroma to stimulate his sense of smell and seduce his appetite.As soon as he takes one bite, he takes a second.

I was making this noodle carefully in my hands, and my thoughts flew far away.

My mother, a former non-famous dance artist and engineer of the human soul, Ms. Pei Yanya, once said during her lifetime: Life is to repay grievances. It’s not that the time has not come.

She also said: "Xu'er, when the time comes, remember to report for me!"

She said these words in reference to one of the most disturbing moments in her life, so I was impressed.It also had a profound impact on my boring childhood and youth.

Before coming to Haibao, a small seaside town in the south, I was born and raised in Beijing and had a happy family.

My father, Guan Yan, was the administrative staff of the dance academy. At that time, he had the title of director. My mother, Pei Yanya, was the pillar of a dance troupe and also an external instructor of the dance academy.The two can be described as gifted scholars and beauties, gods and couples, living a harmonious life of singing in harmony and respecting each other as guests.

It's a pity that talented people have a huge shortcoming, they are too fraternal and easy to empathize.When I was seven years old, Guan Yan fell in love with Wenxiang nephrite from Jiangnan.

According to him, this Wenxiang nephrite is very different from ordinary Wenxiang nephrite.As a divorced woman, not only does she lead an independent and exciting life, but she also teaches her single-parent child, Gu Yu, to be lively, clever, and cute. Her quality of softness on the outside and toughness on the inside may not even compare to the toughest noodles. It was his irresistible charm.

He was so infatuated with her that he couldn't help it, and wrote a long letter of apology to Pei Yanya, asking Pei Yanya to "bury this heart that no longer loves you, and treat me as dead from now on".He also said, "In the future, other people, and you, will be my ghost marriage [1], don't care about self-injury. Since Yin and Yang are separated, I hope you live a bright and splendid life."

Sign a romantic word: Yan.

When I read this letter, I was 14 years old. I couldn't help laughing out loud, and I was slapped by Pei Yanya.She rambled on and on about Guan Yan's good and bad, but she couldn't tell whether it was a lot of resentment or a difficult old relationship in her words.

At that time, Zheng Zhiming spoiled his wife to heaven and gave her the best within her ability, so she had a mobile phone with Internet access.She even went through several people's QQ space, entered Guan Yan's QQ space, picked out photos of a family of three from the album, pointed at them with her fingers, and told me.

"Xu, you must remember that these three are not good people. You will have a better life than them in the future, and you have to complain and revenge for your mother!"

I think when she said this, it was like a little girl freaking out, not necessarily what she was thinking.So I replied very perfunctorily, "Okay, I know", and just fooled it.

She made a fuss for a while, stopped talking, and sent me out with a sigh.

The 14-year-old me, who thought I knew a lot, thought that the reason she was so volatile was because she was pregnant with her second child—or, to be precise, her second and third.Zheng Zhiming is really a person who does big things silently. He and Pei Yanya have been married for several years and have been contraceptive. The first time after liberation, they planted double yolk eggs.

I thought it would be good if she had a baby.Unexpectedly, she committed suicide not long after Zheng Xing and Zheng Hao were born.

Regarding her suicide, both Zheng Zhiming and I are willing to accept that postpartum depression led to suicide.

After that, I unconsciously paid attention to Guan Yan's family.The development of the Internet has made all this easier and easier. It is no exaggeration to say that I grew up watching Gu Yu.

I have fantasized about meeting anyone in Guan Yan's family countless times, but I would never have imagined that Gu Yu and I would meet like this.

When I saw him, my feelings were completely different from what I imagined—except that he was exactly the same as what I knew and imagined, as if I met an acquaintance, and I couldn’t taste other emotions and flavors for the time being.

[1] "The subsequent emotional marriages of the ex are all dark marriages", this joke comes from Fu Seoul's speech in the fifth season of "The Story of Strange Flowers", it is not my original creation.