Chapter 160 - 155: Delicious Shredded Pork and Vegetable Noodles
Yesterday, Xu An had handed over all matters concerning deliveries and store openings to Uncle Guosheng’s friend, Master Wang Datou, so this was the first time he’d slept in until eight.
When he opened his eyes, the room was no longer filled with the pitch-black night sky. Instead, a bright, almost blinding white light met his gaze, and he could see a sunbeam shining through the window onto his quilt. He turned to look beside him. Xu Kang and Xu Le’s spots were empty. Pricking up his ears, he could hear them talking in the courtyard. ’They must have woken up and not wanted to disturb me,’ he thought, ’so they tiptoed out to the courtyard to play.’
He sat up, stretched lazily, and slowly got out of bed. Walking into the courtyard, he saw that Granny Xu was already awake and had come out with her cane to sit down.
"Morning, Granny! Morning, Kangkang, Lele!" Xu An couldn’t help but yawn as he greeted them. ’Strange,’ he thought. ’I’m usually not tired even when I wake up at five. Why do I feel like I haven’t had enough sleep today, even after sleeping until eight?’
A splash of cold water on his face, however, woke him right up. After washing up, Xu An went into the kitchen, cleaned the stove, and started making breakfast. He decided on shredded pork and vegetable noodles—a balanced, nutritious meal with meat, vegetables, and a savory broth.
He took a piece of pork shoulder from the fridge, washed it, and cut it into thin strips. He marinated the strips in a mix of salt, cooking wine, light and dark soy sauce, cooking oil, and starch, then set the bowl aside. Next, he took a head of lettuce he’d picked from the garden last night and a handful of scallions, carefully washing away the dirt before placing them in a colander.
He fired up the stove, heated some oil in the wok, and stir-fried the pork until it was cooked through. After setting the pork aside, he added water to the wok and brought it to a boil. He dropped in the noodles, and when the water returned to a boil, he added the cooked pork and the fresh lettuce. With a final sprinkle of chopped scallions, the delicious shredded pork and vegetable noodles were ready.
Xu Kang and Xu Le loved meat as much as ever, but they didn’t fuss about vegetables, eating whatever was in their bowls. They even drank every last drop of broth before setting their bowls down, completely satisfied. They looked up at Xu An expectantly. "Brother, can we have these yummy meat noodles again tomorrow?"
"Of course. How about I make you guys noodles with meat sauce tomorrow?"
"Yay! We love you the most, Brother!" The two little ones beamed, delighted to hear there’d be more tomorrow. They puckered their greasy little mouths and planted a kiss on Xu An’s face.
After kissing Xu An, perhaps feeling they shouldn’t show favoritism, they shuffled over to Granny Xu, intending to give her a greasy kiss as well. Granny Xu gently held them at bay, refusing their oily affection...
By the time he finished washing the dishes and tidying the kitchen, it was nearly nine o’clock.
Xu An closed the courtyard gate and loaded Granny Xu, Xu Kang, and Xu Le onto his little electric tricycle. He then started driving slowly in the direction of Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant.
Even though Xu An, the manager and owner, didn’t get to the restaurant until just before ten o’clock, the staff were all at their stations. Everything was running as smoothly and orderly as ever; his late arrival hadn’t caused any disruptions.
After making a tour of the three restaurants, Xu An felt that something wasn’t quite right. He wandered through all three storefronts again and finally put his finger on it: his old classmate, Li Xindong, wasn’t bustling about as he usually was. He was nowhere to be seen in any of the three locations.
’Is he not feeling well?’
Xu An hurried up the stairs to the second floor of Restaurant No. 3. The floor was neat and tidy, but there was no sign of any bedding or Li Xindong himself. He pulled out his phone and tried calling him. After three or four unanswered calls, he sent a few text messages, but still received no reply.
’How strange,’ he thought. ’How can a grown man just vanish into thin air?’
’The last time I saw him was around two in the afternoon yesterday. I’ll wait a little longer. If there’s still no word from him by two this afternoon, I’ll call the police.’ With that decided, Xu An turned, went back downstairs, and returned to Restaurant No. 1 to attend to his duties.
Time ticked by. At 10:23 AM, a battered and disheveled figure appeared outside Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant.
His face was bruised and bloodstained, and his gaze was vacant. His clothes were torn and tattered, his hair a mess. The skin of his arms and legs, visible through the rips in his clothes, was covered with scratches and swollen red welts, as if he’d been whipped.
This person was none other than Li Xindong, who had been missing all morning!
It wasn’t just Xu An; the other employees were shocked by Li Xindong’s appearance and quickly ushered him inside. A flurry of activity ensued as people found him clean clothes, wiped his face, and tended to his wounds. Under everyone’s care, Li Xindong finally began to look like himself again, and the light returned to his eyes.
"Xindong, what happened to you?" Xu An asked as soon as he saw Li Xindong was responsive. "Should I call the police?"
Li Xindong lifted his head and stared blankly at Xu An. It took him a long moment to register the question. His eyes darted around for a second before he gave a slow, firm shake of his head. "No need," he said, trying to sound casual. "It’s nothing. I just... I ran into a couple of petty thieves. They took all my things. It wasn’t worth much, so there’s no need to call the police."
The story was so full of holes that even Xu Kang and Xu Le could tell something was off. But since Li Xindong was unwilling to talk or report it, Xu An didn’t press the issue. He just told him to take the day off and get some rest, not to worry about work.
Li Xindong reacted strongly, immediately refusing Xu An’s offer and insisting he was fine to go back to his delivery route. But he couldn’t win against the boss. Xu An’s word was final, so in the end, Li Xindong was more or less forced to go rest in the storeroom of Restaurant No. 2.
’He said he was going to register at his school yesterday, then disappeared for the whole day, only to return looking like this. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what must have happened. After all, what kind of petty thief would bother stealing a cheap phone and a beat-up old bike that you couldn’t even get a hundred yuan for?’
’Even an upright official can’t settle a family dispute. This isn’t something I can get involved in.’
With a sigh, Xu An sat back down behind the cash register. He went back to his planning, trying to figure out what documents he needed to apply for the new factory, which government departments he needed to visit for approvals, and what certificates would be required. Just then, the QQ messenger icon in the bottom-right corner of his computer screen started bouncing.
BEEP BEEP BEEP—
A small megaphone icon appeared on the QQ client; someone had sent him a friend request.
Ever since they launched online payments, customers at Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant had fallen into three categories: those who dined in, those who ordered by phone, and those who ordered and paid directly online. It had been a long time since anyone added his QQ account. Getting a friend request out of the blue felt surprisingly novel.
After accepting the request, Xu An noticed the person’s screen name had a similar style to his own. His QQ name was "Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant," and theirs was "Hai City Food Studio." His first instinct was that it was a marketing account.
"Hello, Mr. Xu. I’m Meng Huai, the founder of the Hai City Food Studio. Our studio runs three accounts, and we primarily focus on food promotion."
This confirmed Xu An’s suspicion; it really was a marketing account. Even as his mind wandered, his fingers flew across the keyboard as he typed out a reply.
"Hello, Mr. Meng. This is Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant. How can I help you?"
"We recently ran a poll on our account, asking our followers to vote for the restaurant they’d most like us to feature. Your restaurant got the most votes. We were wondering if you would be open to us coming by for a visit and a review? We won’t take up much of your time—it should only take about forty minutes from start to finish."
"Here’s a link to our main account. We have 680,000 followers, and each of our posts gets over a million views, with an average of three thousand meaningful interactions."
"We’ve featured several Hai City restaurants like Star Restaurant and Huayu Restaurant. After our reviews, their foot traffic increased by over thirty percent, and it’s still steadily climbing."
"..."
Their account statistics and the claimed boost in foot traffic were undeniably impressive. An account with over 600,000 followers was a big deal, especially in 2012. Even in 2022, that would be considered a major influencer, one who was definitely making a good living.
’In the future, celebrity and influencer accounts would casually boast tens or even hundreds of millions of followers, but those numbers were often heavily inflated with bots. Here in 2012, however, the numbers weren’t so watered down. This follower count was the real deal.’
’Most importantly, eighty percent of their followers are Hai City locals or people who work in the city. Once a review goes up, all those followers are potential customers for Xu’s Fast Food!’
"Understood. Is this a free promotion, or is there a fee?" Xu An asked cautiously. ’If I have to pay for this, I’ll need to set some KPIs.’
"It’s free! However, we will need you to cooperate with us a bit during the visit. We’ll have a few questions prepared on topics our audience is interested in. But don’t worry, none of them will be about anything too personal."
"Okay. Do you know roughly when you’ll be coming? Is there anything we need to prepare in advance?"
"We could drop by at any time! So, Boss Xu, you’d better be ready for a surprise visit! Hehe."
"OK, you’re very welcome."
Xu An was quite confident in Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant. ’After all, we passed inspections from the food safety department, handled a surprise filming from the "Visiting Fast Food Restaurant" show without a problem, and even beat out numerous prestigious Hai City hotels for the expo contract. What’s there to fear from one little influencer’s visit?’
’That being said,’ he thought, ’I should still make sure the restaurants are in perfect order. It would be terrible to make a stupid mistake and embarrass ourselves in front of 600,000 people.’
「Hai City Railway Station, 4:00 PM.」
After getting a call from his brother-in-law at three o’clock, Zhang Dezhen left his rented apartment and headed to the train station. He waited until four, and finally spotted his brother-in-law at the arrivals gate. "Yong! Over here!"
"Brother-in-law!" Yong greeted Zhang Dezhen with a cheeky grin, then cut right to the chase. "Hey, you told my sister that your boss wanted to partner with you on a braised-meats shop. Did you agree to it?"
"I did. It’s a profit-sharing agreement. Right now, I’m making several dozen yuan a day from my share. It’s pretty decent." Zhang Dezhen reached out and took the large woven sack from his brother-in-law’s hand. It felt surprisingly heavy. "What’s all this in here?"
"Just some cured meat and wild vegetables my sister wanted me to bring for you. It’s heavy as hell. Hai City is huge, what can’t you buy here? But she just had to make me lug it all this way," Yong grumbled. His topic then shifted back to Zhang Dezhen. "Brother-in-law, no offense, but why are you so stubborn? With skills like yours, why not just open your own shop? You’d do so much better!"
"Open a shop? Hmph." Zhang Dezhen was annoyed by his brother-in-law’s condescending tone. "Do you know how much rent costs? You need a three-month deposit plus three months’ rent upfront. How much do you think kitchen equipment and renovations cost? And what about buying ingredients? You probably don’t even have two hundred yuan to your name. You want to open a shop with nothing?"
"But didn’t that boss of yours offer twenty thousand yuan for your recipe? Just sell it to him! Then you’ll have the money! Twenty thousand is a little tight, I’ll admit, but it’s enough to get a shop started, right?" Yong heard the anger in his brother-in-law’s voice but paid it no mind. He hurried to catch up and continued nagging him.
"If you’re making thirty to fifty yuan a day just from your cut, that means the total profit is probably six or seven hundred a day! If you went into business for yourself, all that money would be yours."
Zhang Dezhen knew what his brother-in-law was like and couldn’t be bothered to argue. He just walked faster, leaving Yong to mutter to himself behind him. As Zhang Dezhen picked up his pace, Yong had to stop his constant nagging and hurry to keep up. A flash of resentment crossed his face.
’What’s he acting so high and mighty for?’ Yong thought, annoyed. ’He’s just a wage slave at a fast-food joint. If he weren’t my brother-in-law, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to teach him any of this!’