By late afternoon, most of the pastries and tea on the table were gone.
Li Ping'an invited them to stay for dinner. Old Ox put on an apron and sharpened the knife with a swish-swish.
The table of food was simple and plain.
There were four dishes: pig's trotters braised with soybeans, eel braised with garlic, cold dressed tripe strips, and cold dressed pig's ears.
The staples were large griddle cakes and rice.
That night, True Person Wushan and Lin Xiao left the little pavilion and returned to the palace.
They had drunk quite a bit, and their faces were flushed peach-pink.
"No matter how many times I eat Mr. Li's cooking, I never tire of it." Lin Xiao rubbed his belly and sighed. "I feel like even the palace cooks aren't as good as him."
True Person Wushan said, "A return to simplicity-the great Dao is simple.
"Someone like Mr. Li no longer pursues rare treasures or dazzling arrays of precious things.
"Instead, he treats himself as the most ordinary of people, seeking purity and innocence.
"Even something as ordinary as cooking is the same. The Dao is everywhere!"
Today's meeting had left True Person Wushan thoroughly satisfied.
Thinking it over carefully, if Mr. Li's home had been filled with rare treasures, and everything he used or looked at had been priceless and seldom seen in this world,
then True Person Wushan would not have been surprised.
Yet everything he had seen was as ordinary as could be. What he had seen was a man who followed his inclinations, not a profound, unfathomable cultivator.
Knowing what to keep and what to relinquish, untroubled by the mortal world.
Returning to the root, returning to nature.
This was what the Daoist School considered the most perfect state of tranquility, nonaction, and