"Woooo—"
Huo Yuanhong disembarked from the train with the crowd.
The moment he left the platform, he caught the scent of meat. Looking up, he saw a humble little eatery. Several greasy wooden tables were packed with dockworkers, rickshaw pullers, and other working-class folk, all bent over coarse earthenware bowls, noisily slurping noodles speckled with floating oil.
Huo Yuanhong went inside and took a seat. "Shopkeeper, one bowl of scraps-of-meat noodles."
"Coming right up! Please wait a moment, sir!"
Besides the shopkeeper, there was only an apprentice in the place. Seeing a customer come in, the shopkeeper swiftly began cooking the noodles.
In those days, scraps-of-meat noodles were the first choice for people at the bottom who wanted to satisfy a craving.
Scraps of meat meant exactly what the name implied: spoiled chunks cut away from good meat, chopped bone fragments, leftovers too poor even to use as bun filling. When the butcher stalls closed for the day, the shopkeeper would pinch his nose and collect these scraps. No matter what kind of meat they were, he tossed them all into a braising pot and stewed them together.
Because the meat was so poor, it required heavy seasoning—extra scallions, ginger, and star anise—to cover up the stink.
But for laborers at the bottom, they could not afford good meat anyway. These scraps at least had some grease to them and tasted fragrant enough. When the weather turned cold, a bowl of braised noodles would immediately put strength back in their limbs.
A bowl of oily noodles cost three or four cents. Even a rickshaw puller earning eight or nine Silver Dollars a month could occasionally afford one to soothe his craving. If neighbors had some dispute, sharing a bowl of scraps-of-meat noodles could settle things between them.
Not long after