For breakfast, Sister Yang made crucian carp soup and stir-fried pork with pickled vegetables. The staple was the steamed flower rolls from yesterday. Flower rolls here usually came with one of two fillings: chili oil or fragrant beans. Ordinary households rarely made the kind with chopped scallions.
There was also cornmeal porridge to drink. Though they often ate refined grains, this coarse-grain breakfast staple had hardly changed, and everyone liked it.
Sister Yang had prepared such a generous meal, complete with two kinds of soup, because she worried some of them might not be used to one, or might want both. She was accustomed to rising early. By the time Li Long and Gu Xiaoxia got up and washed, the food was already on the table.
"Sister Yang, starting this month, I'm paying you a salary," Li Long said. "You work so hard every day."
"What salary?" Sister Yang's eyes widened. "My girl and I eat here too, and I can earn money myself. You let us live here for free, without charging us for food or rent. Why would you pay me just for cooking? Back in my hometown, people would curse me if they heard!"
She pointed at Han Fang and added:
"You even arranged a school for Xiao Fang and bought her clothes. What she's wearing, the schoolbag she carries-you got all of it. When my Xiao Fang goes to school, people think she's the daughter of a ten-thousand-yuan household.
"Uncle, don't bring this up again. It's not that I don't want money, but I have to have a conscience."
All right, then.
Many people were still very decent in those days and believed in repaying kindness. If they knew that people in later years could be extorted by the very people they saved, they would probably