Reborn in 1984

"I heard the girl Zhou Yan saved this morning was Deputy Factory Director Lin's niece, here visiting relatives. A city girl, and pretty as could be."

"Bullshit! Zhou the Second, that landlubber, saved someone? Did a toad jump off a cliff because it wanted to be Batman?"

"Why did Zhou Yan leave his apprenticeship at the Textile Factory Canteen to open a restaurant? With his half-baked cooking skills, his dishes are either undercooked or badly seasoned. He can't even make fried rice properly. He probably doesn't get three customers a day, and I bet he'll go under within three months."

"Young people are so full of themselves. Who knows whose sweet talk he swallowed? He borrowed himself into debt to open this restaurant and dragged his whole family into the pit. If it really goes under, he'll have no choice but to sell himself."

"Is that news reliable? Zhou Yan is the most handsome young man for miles around!"

"Second Sister-in-Law Lin, you really are..."

The foot of Stone Slab Bridge was practically the town's intelligence center. Several middle-aged women washed clothes as they chatted, with no topic too crude for them.

Near the bridge stood a small stir-fry restaurant. A sign reading "Zhou Erwa Restaurant" hung above its door, but the entrance was shut tight. Only a thin wisp of smoke rose from the chimney.

In the restaurant kitchen, Zhou Yan was feeding paper into the stove. The words "suicide note" stood out starkly in the flames, illuminating his handsome face.

The laughter of those sharp-tongued older women occasionally drifted through the half-open window, their dirty jokes enough to make one's ears burn.

Still, those women had judged him right. Zhou Yan really couldn't become Batman. But he hadn't jumped off a cliff. He had jumped into the Qingyi River.

That landlubber had leaped into Bailatuo, kicked twice, and promptly lost his soul to the river.

When Zhou Yan, a fine young man of Generation Z, opened his eyes, he saw a pair of lotus-white arms bobbing before him. He had swallowed several mouthfuls of water himself and could barely breathe.

Having grown up by the sea, Zhou Yan had been known as a fish in water. Once he came to his senses, he immediately grabbed those arms and pulled her above the surface. Then, supporting her head from behind, he drifted downstream to the bank and hauled her ashore.

A crowd soon gathered around them and hurriedly carried the girl away.

One moment, Zhou Yan had been worrying about how the China-US tariff war would affect his three-digit savings. The next, a freak stroke of luck had sent him crashing into 1984.

His mind had been in too much of a mess for him to see just how pretty the girl was. He only remembered that she was very fair and soft, and even her screams had sounded tender.

Of course, none of that mattered.

Following his memories back to the restaurant, Zhou Yan spent half a day digesting all the memories belonging to the other "Zhou Yan," accepting the fact that he had transmigrated into the body of a young man in a parallel world who shared his name.

The original owner was twenty this year. He had studied cooking at the Jiazhou Silk Factory canteen across the street for two and a half years, but had been fired two months ago after clashing with Director Wang of the canteen.

The guy had dragged his father around to scrape together loans totaling 868.52 yuan. Adding his father's 500 yuan in savings, he had taken over this storefront outside the factory gates and opened a restaurant, declaring that he would put the factory canteen out of business.

But he had clearly overestimated his cooking skills, and his management was an even bigger disaster. The factory canteen had not gone under, while his own restaurant was about to collapse.

The borrowed money was gone, his big talk had become a joke, and Director Wang had mocked him to his face just yesterday. Rent was due again in a couple of days. Unable to bear the pressure, Little Zhou drank all night, wrote a suicide note, and went to jump into the Qingyi River at dawn.

Looking at the stack of IOUs in his hand, Zhou Yan resisted the urge to toss them into the stove and burn them too. What the hell was this supposed to be?

Having grown up in an orphanage, Zhou Yan was obsessed with money. Only money could give him a sense of security.

And he had always lacked a sense of security.

He had worked countless part-time jobs since childhood. After entering university, he had boldly ventured into self-media. With a review style that was thirty percent funny and seventy percent sharp-tongued, plus ninety points of handsomeness, he had become a somewhat famous food blogger with over a million followers. He had saved up a sum of money and was planning to open his first restaurant of his own.

He had finally turned his life around, only to get thrown into 1984 and become poor again!

Zhou Yan: (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

The good news was that he now had a restaurant.

The bad news was that not only had he inherited a restaurant on the verge of bankruptcy, he had also inherited a mountain of debt.

Before his transmigration, this amount of money would have only covered the cost of filming one meal.

But this was 1984. The handwritten menu hanging on the wall listed: Garlic Sauce Pork, 0.35 yuan; Salted Braised Pork, 0.45 yuan; Twice-Cooked Pork, 0.60 yuan; Dongpo Pork Knuckle, 1.20 yuan...

A full employee at the neighboring Jiazhou Silk Factory earned only 38.5 yuan a month.

Along with the IOUs were 3.87 yuan, two meat coupons, and three grain coupons.

There were two types of food bloggers:

One kind was born with a talent for cooking. They were good at sharing recipes and won their fans' affection and admiration that way.

The other kind was born with a talent for eating. They excelled at stuffing their faces and nitpicking food, using precise critiques and exaggerated expressions to share delicacies and tempt fans into opening those evil yellow apps in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, Zhou Yan belonged to the latter kind.

He did not possess the ability to roll up his sleeves, casually show off a little, and bring this restaurant in a small town in southern Sichuan back from the dead with booming business.

Still, the situation was not completely hopeless. He shifted his gaze away from the stove, and with a thought, a panel appeared in his vision:

[Player: Zhou Yan]

[Profession: Chef]

[Wealth: -858.52]

[Professional Skills]:

Knife Skills (Intermediate): 8604/10000 (Your knife skills are enough to meet the needs of most dishes)

Heat Control (Beginner): 668/1000 (You still need more practice with cooking)

Seasoning (Beginner): 695/1000 (Easy there, Salt King)

Eloquence (Advanced): 88888/100000 (A pig rooting through a curtain—it's all in the mouth)

[Mastered Dishes]:

Salted Braised Pork (Beginner): 26/1000 (Little brother went for a walk, on foot, bro)

Twice-Cooked Pork (Beginner): 55/1000 (A newly paved road is so smooth, without a single pebble)

Dongpo Pork Knuckle (Beginner): 12/1000 (Diligence can make up for clumsiness)

Smashed Cucumber (Intermediate): 1871/10000 (Master Huang, you're so capable)

...

[Main Quest: Become the God of Cooking! Make your name known worldwide!]

[Beginner Quest: Please bind a restaurant. Quest reward: Beginner Gift Pack.]

[Wealth Marketplace]: Unlocks when Wealth reaches 1000.

This was the player panel from the chef-training game GG that Zhou Yan had just accepted. Ever dedicated, he had even played it for two days. He had not expected it to transmigrate with him.

The data columns represented his current real abilities, fully explaining why Zhou Erwa Restaurant was facing bankruptcy.

His exquisite knife skills and pathetic heat control and seasoning abilities showed that Little Zhou could only be considered a prep cook, not a true chef.

Of the menu covering one wall, only Smashed Cucumber was passable.

His cooking skills really were a horrible sight.

But this system's evaluation style was so sarcastic. Was it somehow customized?

Like every handsome man present, Zhou Yan usually enjoyed reading webnovels. He was no stranger to transmigration and systems, and he quickly accepted it with delight.

When reading about it, he would angrily curse, Another system!

When it happened to him, he could only think, This is awesome!

1984 was simply too distant for Zhou Yan. There were no filters and no memories attached to it.

Still, he had filmed many old established restaurants and interviewed quite a few self-made restaurant owners. Making the stories behind food a highlight of his videos had always been one of his specialties.

Opening a restaurant in the 1980s meant becoming one of the first people to test the waters after the private economy was deregulated. It was far better than digging for food in the fields.

Zhou Yan had worked part-time as a waiter in restaurants, spent another four years as a food blogger, and prepared for half a year to open a restaurant. Apart from being unable to cook well, he basically possessed everything needed to run a business.

And this system happened to make up for that shortcoming.

Zhou Yan stood up and chose to bind it.

[Ding! Zhou Erwa Restaurant has been successfully bound. Beginner Gift Pack issued. Please claim it!]

Zhou Yan opened the gift pack with his mind:

[Dry-Mixed Suihua Beef Noodles], [Braised Beef Noodles], [Spare Rib Noodles], [Pickled Vegetables]

Four selectable recipes popped out at once.

Zhou Yan's eyes lit up. Three noodle dishes paired with Pickled Vegetables—was this telling him to transform into a noodle shop?

The abundance of this beginner gift pack exceeded his expectations.

With a thought, he selected all four recipes at once. His head buzzed as though countless things had been stuffed into it, leaving him briefly dizzy.

Very quickly, delight appeared on Zhou Yan's face.

They were not four dry recipe sheets, nor were they video lessons playing inside his skull. The knowledge had entered his mind directly!

From kneading dough to pulling noodles, from preparing beef to braising beef, from simmering bone broth to seasoning noodles—it was a complete set of experience, as vivid and natural as the memories he had inherited from Little Zhou.

Zhou Yan was a qualified food blogger and had inherited Little Zhou's cooking foundation. From the recipes in his mind, he could tell that these three noodle dishes would not be bad.

He had learned how to make three kinds of noodles, but that was not all.

Looking at it another way, Two-Pepper Beef was a perfect dish to eat with rice. Braised Beef with Bamboo Shoots was a classic Sichuan dish, and who could refuse Braised Spare Ribs so tender that the meat fell off the bone?

Zhou Yan had studied in Chengdu for four years and had built his food-blogging career by filming Sichuan cuisine. He knew Sichuan cuisine inside out.

Any good noodle shop had a skilled Sichuan chef in the kitchen.

When it came to their love for noodles, Sichuan people did not lose to northerners in the slightest.

Here, anything could serve as a topping. He had eaten Ginger Duck Noodles, Pork Intestine Noodles, Eel Noodles, Chicken Giblet Noodles, Pork Liver Noodles, Rabbit Noodles... and even the absurd Tofu Pudding Tossed Noodles.

One major problem with Zhou Erwa Restaurant was that it had bitten off more than it could chew, while Little Zhou lacked the ability to match its ambitions, leaving him in an impossible mess.

A prep cook who only knew how to make Smashed Cucumber had created a menu with thirty or forty dishes. The cost of ingredients he had to prepare each day alone was enough to drag down this nearly empty restaurant.

Of course, one dish of Smashed Cucumber could not support a restaurant either.

The restaurant's monthly rent alone was 15 yuan. There were also management fees and all kinds of other expenses, bringing the total cost to a full 20 yuan.

This restaurant was no prize. In the hands of an ordinary person, it would be nothing but a hot potato.

Now that Zhou Yan had learned three noodle dishes and a refreshing, palate-cleansing Pickled Vegetables, he finally had a way to break the deadlock.

Walking out of the kitchen, he tore the handwritten menu from the wall and crumpled it into a ball.

From today onward, every new dish on Zhou Erwa Restaurant's menu had to pass his approval first. There would be no cutting corners.

Starting tomorrow, he would sell noodles!

The rent was due in three days. He would earn the rent first, then worry about everything else.