The Rise and Fall of the Last Imperial Cook

22. To Save Steamed Buns

Translator: Zhang Duo

Proofread by Peter Gong

Well, it is still early and birds are just swarming out to catch worms, but it is exactly the busiest time in the daytime at Xiaodongmen. Those coolies and workers are all sleep-deprived so they get up as late as possible. They usually have their breakfast hurriedly in snack bars, or masticate some steamed buns or pancakes on the way. It is not so busy at noon and evening. The reason is that some goods yards and commercial firms offer lunch. Some may not offer lunch but workers prefer to take some foods optionally as lunch, because they don’t want to go home and return after working for half a day. When it is night and work is over, people will have plenty of time so they may make some dishes themselves. In this way they can have a decent dinner and foods for the next day are prepared accordingly. Other people don’t make dishes themselves. They will find a place to have dinner in small groups. Some choose small stores or ask the landlord to make dishes, for they cannot afford snacks outside every day.

As usual, Xu Zhiwei has woken up at this time. The difference is that he doesn’t have to rush to work so he needs not to have breakfast in a hurry. On the contrary, he paces slowly along the street to find an appropriate place for breakfast which is not only delicious enough but can adequately fill his belly as well. Meanwhile, he is looking for a shop he is likely to take over.

The difference among stores is more obvious at such busy time. In those prosperous restaurants, customers sit crowded indoors and outdoors with storekeepers keeping calling out. As for those restaurants whose business is bad, they attract few customers and the owners and waiters all stand at the door anxiously.

“Oh no! A damned bastard extinguished the fire of my steam stove. Oh my god, my buns all turn unleavened. My dozens of catties of meat, vegetables, and hundreds of catties of flour! All wasted!” A scream suddenly comes out from the street, which makes people feel like their chests being choked. The scream sounds depressing and painful as if one’s throat is slit.

Steamed buns at that time are always stuffed. They are different from steamed buns nowadays. So if a whole stove of buns all turn unleavened, the loss is not only flour, but also meat and vegetables indeed.

Xu Zhiwei has walked a little far from the alley when he hears the scream and turns back. The scream comes out from the bun store opposite the alley.

“Goddamned! So villainous! Your family is cursed! My meat and flour are all wasted. I can’t get a single coin today! How could I buy ingredients for tomorrow? You are killing me!” There seems to a sobbing in the scream now.

Xu Zhiwei knows that bun store, whose buns are quite good. Recently the storekeeper has built a new big stove with more than a dozen layers of steamers. The purpose is to make and sell more buns. Bun store is the most flexible among all kinds of snack bars. Customers can sit in stores and enjoy buns with porridge or soybean milk, and they can also buy some buns wrapped in oil paper and have them on the way. They can even take buns as lunch or solid food. It is quite different from noodles and dumplings which must be cooked after customers come and order them, and it still takes a short time when they are already scooped out. As a result, bun stores are likely to be more popular than noodles or wonton stores as long as they can make buns well. This keeper built a new stove and added new steamers because his business is good of late. He has spent his fluid capital on meat and vegetables to prepare stuffing in order to expand the sale. However, other snack stores will probably envy him and worry that their business will be affected by his.

“All my family are waiting in the countryside for food! You ruined my business, then they will become beggars! You putrescent bastard! You ruined my business, but you will also come to a miserable end!” The scream gets louder and louder. These storekeepers are all good at scolding and crying, otherwise they cannot survive in Shanghai.

Xu Zhiwei also knows it well that the storekeeper is complaining on purpose. He wants those who feel pity for him to name the criminal. In fact, he has run the bun store for a long time. Even he has lost all his fluid capital on bun ingredients this time, he can still get ingredients on credit the next day, and he can make the money back in a period of time. Yet when such a thing happened, he will surely kick up a row. It will be best if he can catch the criminal. If not, he can also deter others to prevent such things from happening again. Besides, he is a small businessman and just wants to support his family. He doesn’t mean to make a big fortune. Therefore, he is truly distressed when he lost so many ingredients.

As a matter of fact, Xu Zhiwei is also distressed when he saw so many steamed buns were wasted. As an excellent chef, he always treasures food ingredients. At this point, Xu Zhiwei suddenly remembers that he saw a guy sneak into the bun store and stop at the stove when he was answering the call of nature this morning. Probably it was this guy who extinguished the stove fire secretly. Remembering that, Xu Zhiwei turns back and walks to the bun store. He shovels through the crowd and moves to the door of the bun store.

“Can I have a look at your buns?” Xu Zhiwei asks the storekeeper.

“What do you mean? Don’t you believe I was framed up?” The storekeeper stares at Xu Zhiwei angrily.

After his question, Xu Zhiwei strides onto the stove without the keeper’s permission. He removes the top few layers of steamers and has a look. These buns are unleavened indeed. They feel hard and look yellowish-white, and are still a little warm when touched. Xu Zhiwei counts the time and knows it must be that guy he saw in the morning who extinguished the fire of the stove.

“As far as I can see, the stove fire must have been extinguished two hours before the dawn.” Xu Zhiwei turns to the storekeeper and says.

“Nonsense! How dare the bastard make trouble in the daytime? Hey, your words are so clear. Did you see the bastard?” The storekeeper takes two steps towards the stove.

Xu Zhiwei shakes his head instead of answering the question. It’s true that he saw someone tamper with the stove, but he didn’t see his appearance clearly. There are so many stores and neighbors on the street, so it is hard to pick up that guy from the crowd even if he has seen him clearly. What’s more, if he really finds out that guy who has resorted to foul means out of jealousy, he must get involved in disputes somehow again. Xu Zhiwei has once suffered from it and got a lesson. He understands that there are many things which are not up to him, so the best way is to free himself from such kind of thing.

“So why did you get on the stove and look? To see how poor my buns are, and to disseminate my misfortune to everyone?” The storekeeper is suffering from anger and wants to find a punching bag.

“I can save your buns.” Xu Zhiwei replies calmly.

“What did you say?” The storekeeper thinks he has misheard.

“Hmm? What did this man say?”

“He said he can save those buns.”

“What? Save buns? By what means?”

“You fool! He means he can let unleavened dough be leavened again.”

“It is already unleavened, and he can let it be leavened again? He must think he is Hestia!”

Not only does the storekeeper think he has misheard Xu Zhiwei’s words, but also the crowd begins to wrangle.

“Your stove was extinguished before the dawn, when your buns haven’t been steamed for long. So it looks that they are all unleavened, but yeasts haven’t died out thoroughly and remaining ones are likely to have effect.” Xu Zhiwei says, walking into the store and taking out some bottles of aromatic vinegar which are prepared for stuffed buns.

“Don’t stand still. Remove steamers quickly.” When Xu Zhiwei comes out with vinegar bottles in his hand, he sees that the storekeeper is still standing blankly there, so he shouts to him.

The storekeeper comes to himself and gets so stimulated as if he has taken some resurrection soup. He summons all the waiters in the store to remove the steamers one by one. Xu Zhiwei sprinkles a sheet of vinegar on buns in each steamer.

When all the steamers have been sprinkled with vinegar, Xu Zhiwei shouts again, “Pile up the steamers again and steam them by big fire.”

Steamers are piled up again, and the air intake of the stove is open wide. The storekeeper dismisses all his staff and stirs up the fire in the stove alone with a fire fork. He adds thick firewood in the stove, and then pulls the air box quickly and pushes it slowly. The flame flares up and burns wildly.

More and more people are gathering, and among whom are neighbors nearby, loafers and other stores’ keepers and staff. These lookers-on came here with curiosity when they heard someone is going to save unleavened buns, which is really unimaginable for them and sounds wonderful and elusive like conjuring. They all stand on tiptoe and crane to look at bun steamers, waiting with bated breath for the result.

Two of them joined the crowd out of curiosity when they saw so many people gather at the bun store. They are Zhu Shengpeng and Cai Renxin, who always sell live chickens, ducks and fresh eggs to snack stores on the street, and they want to know what is happening here.

“What on earth are they doing?” Cai Renxin scratches his tangled hair, and is going to squeeze into the crowd directly.

Zhu Shengpeng takes hold of Cai Renxin at once, and takes two steps back to keep the crowd at a distance. He thinks they are carrying baskets and cages so they are more likely to bump into others. Besides, they don’t know what is going on, so it is easy to go away from the trouble when it arises if they keep a certain distance from the crowd. That is the right way to be a looker-on.

The flame is roaring in the store, and the steam spews out quickly. At the beginning it just envelops the high steamers, but later it fills the air gradually as if a thick fog falls. The crowd around feel the difference in the steam soon, because they catch an anomalous smell, which is a mixture of meat stuffing, leaven dough and aromatic vinegar. At ordinary times, people can feel this smell in the vinegar plate only when a bun is just steamed and bitten open, and the wrapper which is saturated with gravy is dipped in aromatic vinegar. And people must get closer to smell it. In the old days, a customer’s table manner is jokingly called “eating on the sly” if he is good at eating steamed buns, because he can’t get the best feeling indeed if he fails to bend over the desk and get closer to the vinegar plate.

But today is different. The smell, which is cherished at ordinary times, now is free to linger along the street recklessly, stimulating people’s sense of smell and stirring up people’s taste. All the people are greedy for it uncontrollably.

The big fire in the stove is still burning. The storekeeper’s round face is already covered with beads of sweat. When he adds and stirs firewood, he often turns to Xu Zhiwei, implying that he regards Xu Zhiwei as a life-saving straw. He hopes that the saviour can come to the stove and observe the state of fire and steamers, and decides when to stop the fire.

But Xu Zhiwei keeps standing more than a dozen steps away from the stove and steamers, his eyes squinting. Meanwhile, his nose is judging the smell in the steam, and he also has a towel which is saturated with oil in mind.

Cai Renxin sees Xu Zhiwei through the crowd in front of him. He has a feeling that this guy seems familiar, but he can’t remember where he met this guy. It is also normal, for he just once came across Xu Zhiwei when both of them were in a hurry and couldn’t remember his appearance.

“It’s okay. Stop the fire and take steamers down.” Xu Zhiwei finally says quietly. After  that, he calmly walks out of the crowd and heads in his former direction.

Hearing Xu Zhiwei’s words, the crowd is in uproar again because the result they have been waiting for is coming. The bun store’s keeper appears somehow flurried when he stops the fire and opens the steamers hurriedly. He is actually the one who is mostly eager to see the result.

When steamers are just uncovered, a smell, which is even stronger, pours out. At this moment, people have an illusion that they have bitten open the bun, and are swallowing the mixture of meat stuffing, gravy and dough. “Mind out! It’s very hot!” The storekeeper has to use these menacing words, or he cannot take down the top steamers with the crowd gathering around him.

People step back a little. The storekeeper and his staff put a steamer on the table. All the people around here remain motionless, enjoying greedily the smell from the steamer. They stare at the steamer for they all want to be the first one who catches the sight of steamed buns.

The only one who is moving is the storekeeper. He takes down the towel on his shoulder and waves above the steamer. The towel disperses the steam, and the steamed buns appear.

Objectively speaking, it is true that dough is leavened, but is not as plump and soft as normal. After all, remedy is only remedy. Those parts on dough which are completely unleavened can’t be re-leavened any more. The vinegar can only activate yeasts which are still alive. As a result, today’s bun wrappers are half soft and half hard. Unleavened dough has reached a bouncy and chewy level.

But on the other hand, more meat juice can be seen through the wrapper, and some of the juice even oozes out of the wrapper. Besides, with sprinkled vinegar that has melted into buns, and the big fire, the wrapper assumes a visual effect of transparency. Every bun looks crystal-clear and exquisite as if it is carved out of jade.

The storekeeper carefully picks up a steamed bun, puts it to his mouth slowly and bites it lightly. Everyone’s heartbeat accords with his mouth’s movement.

Before the storekeeper swallows a mouthful and says anything, people around him begin to throw copper coins and take buns because they have seen over-flowing juice at the corner of the storekeeper’s mouth, and his enjoyable expression. What’s more, a smell which is even stronger from chewing bun is also drilling into their nostrils.

“Line up! Don’t grab! One at a time! Hey, don’t grab!” The storekeeper shouts loudly. It is completely impossible for him to have the second mouthful.

When the smell of buns fills up the whole street, all the buns in high steamers have already sold out. An incomplete bun is left in the storekeeper’s apron. It is the first one which was bitten by him but couldn’t be enjoyed till now. When he picks it up again, he suddenly remembers the saviour of all the buns. He stands on a bench and gets on the table to look around, but fails to find Xu Zhiwei.

Zhu Shengpeng also bought two buns. He can’t wait to take two bites to judge the taste and then he remembers to give the other one to Cai Renxin. “Bro, have a try. I have never eaten such kind of bun. It is really delicious. Anyone who can make this kind of bun can surely make a fortune, even with a little stall beside the street.”

Cai Renxin, however, doesn’t take the bun at once as if he is lost in thought. “Where did I meet the guy who saved these buns? I remember it, I once knocked him down by the river at Mudu port. He was carrying many knives, so he might be a bandit. It’s strange that a bandit is good at making buns. Don’t tell me he makes human flesh buns.”

“Hmm, you can’t say a man is a bandit for the reason that he has many knives. There are even more knives in knives and scissors stores, so do you think blacksmiths who forge knives should be arrested?” Zhu Shengpeng thinks Cai Renxin’s idea is funny.

“That’s true. You are right. A guy with so many knives can also be a chef, or he can’t save these buns.” He takes a big bite on the bun while speaking, and praises loudly after a mere chewing, “Yummy! Really delicious!”

Now, most of people on Xiaodongmen Street are talking about the matter that buns are saved. Those who are lucky to eat buns play it up. The bun is praised like fairy dish in heaven. In their words, there steamed buns are like kiln transmutation. All the elements must go hand in hand harmoniously if a bun store is to make this kind of delicious bun.