Republic of China Old Shadows (Part 2)

Jiang Feng struggled to get up from the ground.

This place looked like a storage room, possibly backstage at a theater, with skirts, suits, lamps, telephones, shelves, oil paintings, and other old or broken props piled together.

Jiang Huiqin was holding a bulging, tightly wrapped cloth bundle.

"Huiqin, I really don't understand, what is it you don't like about that wedding dress? I was trying to give you a surprise, you're really a killjoy!"

"I don't like anything about it! We're taking wedding photos, pictures of me getting married, and I should get to decide what I wear!"

"So you want to wear that red jacket wedding dress? Make our wedding look feudal, ignorant, and ridiculous?" Li Mingyi raised his voice. "I'm wearing a suit and you're wearing a phoenix coronet, don't you think that's absurd? Huiqin, you and I have both received modern education, why are you acting like one of those rigid old scholars?"

"Ridiculous? You think it's ridiculous?" Jiang Huiqin looked up at him, her delicate makeup smudged with tears.

She untied the bundle in her hands, revealing the neatly folded wedding dress inside. She took out the outer jacket, unfolded it, held it up, and pointed at it, trembling with anger.

"You think it's ridiculous? Li Mingyi, I spent 4 years embroidering this wedding dress, a full 4 years! My mother had a difficult labor when she gave birth to me, I didn't have a mother, and my sister-in-law passed away. No one taught me how to embroider a wedding dress, I figured it out all on my own. I ruined so many pieces, only this one turned out well."

"You think it's ugly, ridiculous, not as good as the wedding dress you had tailored by that Parisian seamstress? But this is something I embroidered myself! A girl should wear a wedding dress she embroidered herself when she gets married! Let me tell you, don't talk to me about feudal or modern. I went to a girls' school. I didn't learn your fancy Physics or Chemistry. We learned how to support our husbands and manage the household. If that makes me feudal and old-fashioned, then so be it."

Jiang Huiqin, sobbing, refolded the jacket and put it back in the bundle. She picked up the cloth bag and quickly walked out.

"Go find your liberal, free, modern woman to take wedding photos with! I'm not taking pictures today!"

Jiang Feng quickly followed her.

"Miss Jiang, have you made up your mind? Are we taking these photos?" The photographer, seeing Jiang Huiqin coming downstairs, smiled and hurried to greet her.

"We're not taking them. He can find whoever he wants to take pictures with." Jiang Huiqin wiped the tears from her face and left the photo studio directly.

Fortunately, Jiang Huiqin wasn't running this time, or Jiang Feng's backside would have been in trouble again.

His grand-aunt really had a temper, but Li Mingyi deserved it.

Calling his fiancée feudal, old-fashioned, and ridiculous, he probably didn't want a wife anymore!

As she walked, Jiang Huiqin stopped at a wonton stall.

"A small bowl of wontons, no scallions." Jiang Huiqin found a table, sat down, placed the cloth bundle beside her, and handed some money to the stall owner.

The wonton stall was set up at the alley entrance. The owner was a middle-aged man with a hunched back. The stall only had three small tables, which were pitted and greasy. Not only were the tabletops oily, but there were also many splinters along the edges.

Before taking the money, the owner casually wiped the table in front of Jiang Huiqin with a greasy, dirty rag and then tossed the rag onto the adjacent table. Without washing his hands, he grabbed a small handful of pre-wrapped wontons from a bamboo basket and threw them into the boiling pot.

A moment later, a bowl of wontons was ready.

He added two drops of sesame oil, nothing else. The owner brought the bowl, which had three chips in it, to Jiang Huiqin.

The wontons looked terrible. The wrappers were thick, the filling was sparse, and they weren't wrapped tightly. More than half of the wontons had fallen apart in the bowl. Jiang Huiqin wasn't focused on the wontons either; she kept looking back, but she didn't see the person she was looking for.

People came and went on the bluestone-paved street: gentlemen in long gowns, laborers in short shirts, young men dressed as students, rickshaw pullers, and beautiful women in qipaos.

But Li Mingyi was not among them.

Jiang Huiqin tilted her head, staring blankly at the street. As she watched, tears began to fall. After a moment of silent crying, Jiang Huiqin turned her head defiantly, looking at the now-cold wontons in front of her, and tasted one.

Her tears fell even harder.

Jiang Feng, watching her, felt like handing her a tissue.

Li Mingyi, who had been anxiously waiting and was about to get a sore on his lip from worrying, finally found her.

"Huiqin, why did you come here to eat wontons?" As soon as Li Mingyi spoke, Jiang Feng wanted to cover his mouth.

Teenage romance should be an innate skill, but for this guy, it was like he had a congenital defect and his innate skills hadn't awakened.

Jiang Huiqin looked at him, her face full of grievance: "Didn't you go find your free, democratic, and open-minded life partner? Why are you looking for someone like me, who is feudal, old-fashioned, and ridiculous?"

"Who said I was going to find someone free, democratic, and open-minded? Huiqin, can you be reasonable?"

My dear uncle-in-law, I beg you, please stop talking!

Jiang Feng, watching from the side, wished he could stuff the wontons on the table into Li Mingyi's mouth to shut him up. Weren't his sweet words yesterday evening so smooth? Why was he so stubborn and unyielding today?

"Then go find someone else who's reasonable!" Jiang Huiqin turned her head away, looking at the bowl. Big, teardrop-shaped drops fell into the wonton soup.

A moment of silence passed between them.

"Don't cry anymore." Li Mingyi took out a handkerchief and gently wiped away Jiang Huiqin's tears, saying softly, "Your eyes are all swollen from crying, it won't look good for the photos later."

"Who wants to take photos? Didn't you say the dress I embroidered was ugly?" Jiang Huiqin whispered.

"You look beautiful in anything. In my eyes, you are the most beautiful person in the world."

"More beautiful than Ruan Yuling?"

"A million times more beautiful than Ruan Yuling!"

"Liar." Jiang Huiqin's tears turned into a smile.

Li Mingyi took Jiang Huiqin's hand and walked back towards the photo studio.

The girl's hand tightly gripped the boy's hand, as if afraid he would run away.

The next second, Jiang Feng was back in his room.

He glanced at his phone. Only 5 minutes had passed.

"Ding, congratulations to the player for discovering a new feature. The game will be updated soon."

"Game is updating, current progress: 0%."

Jiang Feng: ...

Here we go again, an update so slow it's suffocating.

However, in Jiang Huiqin's memory just now, besides the public displays of affection and the cloying scent of romance, there was also a dish made by Jiang Chengde.

Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices!

Jiang Feng had watched the entire process of making that dish from every angle, without missing a single detail.

It was a shame Jiang Huiqin left early and didn't get to see the final plating and the pouring of the soup.

Jiang Feng sat on the bed, trying hard to recall the method for making Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices that he had seen in Jiang Huiqin's memory.

No, it was too difficult.

He had only watched it once. The ingredients and the handling techniques were easy to distinguish, but mastering the heat control and seasoning just by sight, without tasting, was too hard for Jiang Feng. Not to mention the essence of the entire dish – the clear soup.

Jiang Feng had only smelled it; he didn't even know the ingredients used to make the broth.

If he had the ability to identify ingredients just by smelling them, his grandfather wouldn't have hit him on the head with the bottom of a pot when he was learning to cook as a child.

Convinced he couldn't learn to make Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices, and with his sleepiness gone after reviewing the memory, Jiang Feng decided to go downstairs and wander around.

It was rare to have free time since the semester started, and it would be a waste to spend it sleeping.

Ji Yue was still drawing downstairs. Jiang Feng had spent a large part of his day in Jiang Huiqin's memory, but in reality, only a few minutes had passed. Seeing Jiang Feng come downstairs, Ji Yue seemed a bit surprised.

"Not sleeping anymore?"

"No, I'm going out for a walk."

At this time, it was the quietest period for the food street.

The lingering heat of the late summer sun made him dizzy as he walked, completely killing his appetite.

Jiang Feng was contemplating something.

Something that, if Comrade Wang Xiulian and Jiang Jiankang found out about, might result in him getting double-teamed and forced to kneel on the knife rack with the pressure cooker on his head.