"Huh? Kid, why are you back again? Didn't I already teach you how to make edible quartz?" Mr. Dàkōng looked curiously at Heath, who had returned after leaving. Beside Mr. Dàkōng, an elderly woman's eyes were red, as though she had just been crying.
"Mr. Dàkōng, I wanted to ask about recipes for edible quartz. I made a batch today, but I prepared it like a cold jellyfish salad, and it didn't taste very good," Heath asked, somewhat troubled. Although he was also curious about the elderly woman's relationship with Mr. Dàkōng, he refrained from asking when he saw her red eyes.
Heath thought she had probably encountered something upsetting, quite possibly related to those people downstairs who had tried to break into the nursing home.
"Recipes, huh? Do you know why hardly anyone makes or learns to make edible quartz anymore?" Mr. Dàkōng sat down on the sofa, crossed one leg over the other, and looked at Heath with a smile.
"Because edible quartz doesn't taste good?" Heath thought of one possibility. After all, there had been a saying in his previous life: if a novel ingredient never became widely popular in China, that proved it really didn't taste good.
If he had to give an example, Heath thought turkey would be a good one. After all, in Chinese people's memories of earlier days, turkey had been a treat people in Europe and America ate once a year. The sight of those huge birds and drumsticks made people swallow uncontrollably, and many even thought turkey had to taste delicious.
But as China's economy developed, turkey gradually went from something that looked incredibly tempting yet unattainable in cartoons and movies to food within easy reach. Even so, turkey never became a widely adopted ingredient in China, because it simply didn't