Chef Hua

With only two women at home, it wasn’t appropriate to invite guests over for a meal, so Old Mother Meng insisted and finally convinced Sun the Great Saint to visit in the evening to share a few drinks with Meng Yuhuai. The entire afternoon was spent fussing over this, and after lunch, Hua Xiaomai took little Walnut back to their room for an afternoon nap. Around the beginning of the afternoon, Zhou Yunyun timidly arrived.

Old Mother Meng wasn’t one to meddle in others’ affairs. Clearly seeing that Zhou Yunyun had something on her mind, she didn’t inquire further. She simply took little Walnut away, leaving the master and apprentice to talk in private. Hua Xiaomai had just woken up, still somewhat groggy, and went to the kitchen to fetch some snacks. She then brewed two strong cups of Pine Nut Tea and led Zhou Yunyun to the main room, shutting the door behind them.

From beginning to end, Zhou Yunyun kept her head down, her lips pursed as if on the verge of tears, indicating a heart full of grievances. Hua Xiaomai disliked her pitiful state and rapped on the table, cutting straight to the point, "There are no strangers here now, and since you’re willing to tell me about this, you must trust me enough. So why not tell me everything clearly? What exactly happened with your wages? Could it be... you didn’t take a single coin back home?"

Zhou Yunyun was holding her tea bowl pitifully, her upper teeth biting her lower lip, struggling for a long while before she finally said, "It’s not that, I..."

Indeed, the issue was truly related to those wages.

Although Zhou Yunyun had completed her apprenticeship, she was still a novice, and it was quite impossible for her salary to compare with that of Wang Zhanrui or Master Tan. However, seven hundred coins a month was far from low for a young person who had just stepped into the catering industry.

In February, when she received her wages for the first time, the young girl was so delighted she nearly fainted. In the past, with her honest and timid nature, she would have definitely taken the full amount back to her family, not keeping a penny for herself.

However, after spending more than a year in Daoxiang Garden, surrounded by shrewd and uncompromising sisters-in-law like Chun Xi and La Mei, and with Hua Xiaomai occasionally advising her to consider her own interests more, the constant exposure to their influence meant she was no longer as naive as before.

Last month when she received her salary, she divided the seven hundred coins in two, taking three hundred and fifty back home and keeping the rest a secret from Zhou Qing. She didn’t keep the money for herself; since Hua Xiaomai was in her confinement period and it wasn’t convenient, she handed it all to Chun Xi, asking her to save it for her, planning for her future.

"In front of my father, I insisted that I only had those three hundred and fifty coins, no matter how he questioned me, I didn’t yield. He got angry, saying I was incompetent for not earning enough to cover his expenses," Zhou Yunyun said through her tears, choked up, "I’m guessing, if he wasn’t wary of Daoxiang Garden being fully staffed now and having Brother Yuhuai’s support, he would’ve caused a scene at the shop by now. Since he doesn’t have the guts to do so, he’s developed the idea to sell me off, hoping to exchange me for twelve or twenty taels of silver—needless to say, that money would never reach my mother or my sisters’ hands. Most likely, almost all of it would end up wasted on his drinking and gambling!"