You had to admit, before it was tidied up, the dining hall had looked rather shabby. With a little sprucing up, it really did take on a certain rustic charm, simple and elegant.
Small as the dining hall was, cleaning it inside and out actually took quite a bit of time.
After Yun Zhaozhao finished tidying the dining hall, she checked the time. Seeing that there was less than half an hour left before the mealtime she had arranged with Xu Ping, she headed for the kitchen beside the dining hall to see how Daoist Chang Kong was getting on with the food.
But the moment she stepped through the doorway, Daoist Chang Kong bellowed her right back out. "Shoo, shoo, shoo! This kitchen's small enough already. There's barely room for two people to turn around in here, and now you're coming to get in the way."
Yun Zhaozhao didn't dare upset the chef right now. After all, if he threw down his tools and quit, losing the two thousand yuan would be the least of her worries; losing face in front of her old classmate would be far worse. So she could only meekly retreat and go wash the fruit with well water nearby.
Speaking of that well, it was another wonderful surprise Yun Zhaozhao had discovered only after moving in. How many city kids these days had ever seen a well? Yun Zhaozhao certainly never had, growing up. At first, someone had covered its opening with a slab of stone, and she had assumed it was an abandoned well. But after she and Daoist Chang Kong moved the stone off the rim, she discovered that not only was the well perfectly intact, its water was also crystal clear. It couldn't have been better suited for washing up in summer.
Most importantly, it even saved them money on water bills.
Yun Zhaozhao lowered a bucket on a rope, drew up a bucketful of well water to soak the watermelon in, and brewed a pot of tea. Then she spotted Xu Ping at the foot of the mountain, leading a whole procession toward Clear Breeze Temple.
Honestly, in all the days Yun Zhaozhao had been at Clear Breeze Temple, this was the first time she had seen so many people coming to visit. For some reason, she felt a little excited. So excited, in fact, that she couldn't help calling through the kitchen door to Daoist Chang Kong, who was cooking up a storm inside, "Daoist! Daoist! We have guests! We have guests..."
Daoist Chang Kong found a moment to poke his head out of the kitchen window for a glance, then looked distinctly unimpressed. "It's only a table or two of guests. Anyone who didn't know better would think we had a few hundred tables coming!"
Yun Zhaozhao remained optimistic. "A few hundred tables still starts with just a few! Don't look down on these one or two tables. This is our temple's first step toward growing bigger and stronger. As the saying goes, the first step is always the hardest. As long as we get off to a good start, guests will come flocking like clouds."
Encouraged by Yun Zhaozhao's optimism, Daoist Chang Kong suddenly found some motivation too. "You have a point. Then I'll hurry up and cook another couple of dishes. Let's try to turn all these customers into regulars."
Yun Zhaozhao said, "You got it!"
The older woman helping carry out the dishes listened in bewilderment. "...What, is Clear Breeze Temple going to stop being a Taoist temple and become a dining hall instead?"
Yun Zhaozhao hastily explained, "Oh, no. The temple will definitely still be a temple. We're just taking on a little other business on the side. After all, as you know, nothing comes easy these days..."
The woman was very understanding. "I understand. It's all to make a living."
Beside them, Daoist Chang Kong swung his large ladle and chimed in right on cue. "Ah, life is hard, so this Daoist has to ply his art!"
Yun Zhaozhao said, "..."
Chapter 4
While Yun Zhaozhao and the Daoist were lamenting the hardships of life inside the temple, Xu Ping's heart was actually seesawing with nerves too.
There was no other reason for it. This was mainly because it was Xu Ping's first time taking the lead in organizing a company team-building event since officially starting her job. As someone fresh out of university, still full of hopes for
working
life, what newcomer wouldn't want the first event she organized at her new company to leave a good impression on her bosses and colleagues?
The morning's icebreaker games had gone fairly smoothly, and there probably wouldn't be any major issues with the afternoon hike either. The only real wild card was today's lunch.
So Xu Ping was nervous!
She wasn't afraid of anything else, only that lunch would go off the rails and leave her unable to face her bosses and colleagues.
But once she stepped through Clear Breeze Temple's main gate, her nerves gradually began to settle.
Because the surroundings at Clear Breeze Temple looked a little better than Xu Ping had imagined. Though quiet and deserted, everything was exceptionally clean and tidy, inside and out. These days, eating out wasn't always just about the food; it was also about the setting and atmosphere. Xu Ping felt that, in those two respects, this lunch could at least score above a passing grade.
Clear Breeze Temple had three gates in all, the first being the main gate they had just entered. Beyond it lay the temple's first courtyard, which contained a stone-carved rockery and a pool of clear spring water. One glance told them someone had carefully tended the spring recently; even the pebbles inside had been scrubbed clean. The only pity was that there were no koi in the water, leaving it a little short on liveliness.
The second courtyard was quite ordinary, just a place for burning incense and worshipping the Buddha, though a large clump of green bamboo grew in one corner. Its shadows danced as the bamboo swayed gracefully, lending this otherwise deserted temple an even stronger air of antiquity. Everyone instinctively softened their footsteps, afraid of disturbing the peace of that moment.
Only after passing through the third temple gate did they see Yun Zhaozhao waiting outside the dining hall.
To keep her company's boss from suspecting that she and Yun Zhaozhao were secretly colluding to pocket kickbacks from the company, Xu Ping had arranged things with Yun Zhaozhao before coming: when they met for lunch, they would pretend not to know each other.
So when she saw Yun Zhaozhao, Xu Ping worked hard to produce a professional smile and greeted her in a thoroughly businesslike manner. "Hello, we're here for lunch. We made a reservation."
Yun Zhaozhao played along perfectly. "Hello, hello! Your food will be ready shortly. Please come inside, have some tea, and take a rest!"
With that, Yun Zhaozhao led the group into the dining hall.
The fragrance of tea drifted through the dining hall, mingling with the enticing smells of food from the kitchen next door, making these already ravenous young people look forward to lunch even more.
While Yun Zhaozhao was topping up everyone's tea, a talkative young man took the initiative to ask who she was. "Hello, may I ask what your role is at this temple?"
This happened to be something everyone else was curious about too, Xu Ping included. As soon as he asked, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked eagerly at Yun Zhaozhao, waiting for her answer.
Since Yun Zhaozhao had already invited Xu Ping to the temple for lunch, she hadn't intended to keep hiding it anyway, so she simply told them the truth. "This temple currently belongs to me."
Now it wasn't just the young man who had asked the question who was stunned. Even Xu Ping, her old classmate, couldn't help looking surprised. After all, they had been classmates for four years, and she had never heard that Yun Zhaozhao had a family background like this. Before coming here, Xu Ping had still thought of Yun Zhaozhao as a poor classmate who couldn't find a job and had to settle for working in a park. Who would have thought that, in the blink of an eye, she would already own a Taoist temple?
For a moment, Xu Ping's feelings were a little complicated. She was happy for her old classmate, yet couldn't help feeling a tiny twinge of envy.
So much so that she barely noticed when Yun Zhaozhao left.
While Yun Zhaozhao had been there, everyone had been relatively restrained. Now that she had left, they all started chattering at once:
"I thought everyone running a Taoist temple these days was some old man in his seventies or eighties. I never expected the temple master to be so young. She looks about our age!"
"Not just young. She's really pretty too!"
"I just wonder how good the food at her temple is. If the cooking's good too, that would be unbeatable."
Yun Zhaozhao hadn't gone out to do anything else, just to cut up the watermelon she had been chilling in the well water and arrange it on plates.
By now, Daoist Chang Kong had also finished cooking pretty much everything and was directing the older woman to carry the dishes into the dining hall.
Yun Zhaozhao had originally thought Daoist Chang Kong would prepare an entirely vegetarian feast, because she had assumed all Taoist priests were vegetarians. To her surprise, he had actually made several meat and seafood dishes. She hadn't had time to look closely, but she knew one was salt-baked prawns, and another appeared to be pan-fried Spanish mackerel.
She asked Daoist Chang Kong curiously, "Can Taoist priests eat meat too?"
Daoist Chang Kong said, "Generally, Taoist priests belong to different sects. Some don't eat it, and some do."
Yun Zhaozhao asked, "Then do you eat it?"
Daoist Chang Kong said, "It depends on my circumstances. When I have money, I do. When I don't, I don't."
Yun Zhaozhao said, "...Then no wonder I felt such a sense of kinship the first day I saw you. I'm the same."
Daoist Chang Kong gave Yun Zhaozhao a smile of mutual understanding.
For ten diners, Daoist Chang Kong had prepared ten dishes and a soup. When Yun Zhaozhao went in to serve the watermelon, she made a point of counting them again. Besides the two meat and seafood dishes she had seen earlier, there were another two generously portioned meat dishes: pork braised with dried bamboo shoots and red-braised pig's trotters.
Apart from those, the rest were all ordinary dishes.
In fact, there was nothing particularly special about Daoist Chang Kong's cooking techniques. Yet for some reason, even the most ordinary dishes tasted exceptionally delicious when prepared by his hands.
Yun Zhaozhao had specifically asked him about it before, but even Daoist Chang Kong couldn't explain why. He only said that he had been particularly good at cooking ever since he was little. It was precisely because he was a good cook and especially good at eating that his weight had remained stubbornly high all these years.
Yun Zhaozhao knew Daoist Chang Kong's culinary skills better than anyone, so she wasn't the slightest bit worried that Xu Ping's colleagues wouldn't like the food.
In fact, just looking at the satisfied, blissful expressions of everyone around the table, Yun Zhaozhao knew this one was in the bag.
By the end of the meal, the young people had not only swept every dish on the table clean, they even wanted to order another couple of dishes. But Daoist Chang Kong waved his plump hand and turned down their request. "There's no more this time. Come back next time!"
Since they had agreed beforehand that they would eat whatever Daoist Chang Kong cooked and make no additional requests, the group didn't insist in the end. They paid the bill without fuss and left, not forgetting to praise Daoist Chang Kong's outstanding cooking on their way out.