We still have to find a way to build a toilet at the innermost corner of the yard, at the east wall.

After Zhou Xiang came back, he secretly placed a small basket with space in an inconspicuous corner of the woodshed, and covered it with waste newspapers from the firewood pile.

Back in the house, Ling Ran was playing chess with Zhou's father. "Zhou Xiangxiang, if you come, I can't beat you."

Zhou Xiang sat in the seat that Ling Ran had vacated and began to clean up the mess, turning the situation around in no time.

Father Zhou looked at the chessboard. It seemed that his daughter's chess skills had improved again. He hadn't seen her play against anyone.

After a few ups and downs, Zhou's father automatically admitted defeat, "My daughter, your chess skills have improved too fast."

"Dad, you always use the same old tricks. There's no change. I've mastered your routine. Look, if you move like this, this car is here, this horse doesn't move, and this phase appears, I won't kill you."

"That's no way to win. In the end, I'll still be forced to be the general against the general by you."

"Okay, I won't play anymore. Your chess skills are no match for mine!"

Father Zhou looked at his arrogant daughter and didn't know what to say about her, as she was always bragging about herself.

Ling Ran wanted to touch Zhou Xiang's head again, but when he saw Zhou's father, he put his hand down.

Zhou wanted Ling Ran to come out with him and pointed to a corner of the woodshed. "Hey, there's some fruit there. Do you want some?"

Ling Ran shook his head and saw the basket covered with newspaper. He really didn't notice it.

Ling Ran came again in the afternoon.

"Since you came here to play in the afternoon, why did you go back to eat at noon?" Zhou Xiang felt helpless. The devil's thoughts were different from those of a normal person. He didn't know what he would think of next.

"My mom said that I eat at your house every day and add to your family's burden."

"You're still helping my family! Besides, don't you know whether it's adding to the burden or not?"

"I still have to listen to my mother sometimes, otherwise I'm afraid she'll kick me out."

Actually, it wasn’t like that. Mom didn’t care where she ate. It was just that she hadn’t done anything today and felt embarrassed to eat here.

Besides, tomorrow is the 30th, so I can’t visit her. I can only go to see her on the first day of the new year under the pretext of wishing her a happy new year, so I’ll see her a little more this afternoon.

Ling Ran played shuttlecock with Zhou Xiang and they exercised for a long time. They also played a game of chess. Naturally, Ling Ran lost, but Ling Ran asked Zhou Xiang to teach him. He hoped that he could at least do something to accompany her.

Zhou wanted to teach him all the skills he had discovered, how to calculate the opponent's possibilities, and how he should respond.

When Ling Ran got home, he asked his father to play chess. Ling's father was also famous for his chess skills in the town. Seeing that his son dared to challenge him, he set up the chessboard and planned to teach him a lesson.

But after a few games, except for the first game which I won, the rest were all draws, and I even almost lost one game.

Has my son's chess skills improved significantly? That's unlikely, isn't it? Apart from Xiang Xiang, I don't see him playing chess with anyone else every day.

No, could it be that Xiang Xiang taught him? How could he not know his son's half-baked chess skills? Some time ago, he happily brought the chessboard to see Xiang Xiang!

"You think this is what the girl taught you, right?"

"You figured it out?"

"Well, that's not like your style. Watching chess is like watching a person. Your chess skills just now were very stable, and your defense and attack were integrated. If it were you, you would just attack bravely."

"Well, I'm thinking about teaching her a few moves. I'll practice them first, and then I'll ask her to teach me a few more moves. I'm sure I can beat you."

Ling Quan felt mixed emotions when he saw his son praising Xiang Xiang girl and her arrogant look. His son was completely defeated by that girl, but that girl was capable and could control his son, which was good.

In the evening, Zhou Xiang accompanied his mother to make dumplings. In previous years, Zhou Xiang had to chop twenty or thirty kilograms of cabbage, a pile of vermicelli, a pile of onions, ginger, and garlic, and squeeze out the moisture from the cabbage. Zhou Xiang could sit at the table and chop for most of the day.

This year, Zhou Xiang only asked his mother to boil red beans, add sugar, and make red bean paste filling. His father likes meat filling, so he chopped three or four pounds of meat himself yesterday afternoon.

The mother and daughter were making red bean paste dumplings, while Zhou's father was mixing meat filling in a porcelain bowl. Zhou thought that her father had only added basic seasonings, and the meat filling was too dry to mix. She thought of the dumplings her father made, which always had hard fillings.

I urged him to mix soy sauce and water, and add soy sauce and water while stirring the meat filling until the meat filling could be easily stirred.

"Dad, do you know there's a kind of soup dumpling? The meat filling is mixed and made as thin as porridge, then frozen into ice and stuffed into dumplings.

Take a bite and the soup will flow out, so adding a little soy sauce is a piece of cake, it will all be absorbed into the meat filling. Just stir it vigorously in one direction and the meat and water will blend together.

After hearing what his daughter said, Mr. Zhou finally understood why his meat buns were not popular every year! The filling inside was so hard that it seemed impossible to bite.

"Where did you hear about this method of mixing stuffing?"

"Didn't I go to the city? I went there early for breakfast this morning and saw the boss mix the stuffing like this. Don't worry. Also, use less salt, soy sauce is salty."

After the mother and daughter finished wrapping the red bean paste buns and steamed them, Zhou Xiang started to help his father wrap the meat buns.

In the past, my mother was the most against my father making meat buns. She said they were not tasty and it was a waste of money to buy so much meat. This year, my father bought a lot of meat and said he wanted to make meat buns, and my mother stopped nagging.

Zhou Xiang smelled the meat filling and tried the softness and hardness of the meat filling. Hmm, this time the meat buns shouldn’t be so unpalatable.

"Dad, make smaller dumplings with less meat filling. Big dumplings have just a lump of meat in them and they're not tasty."

Looking at the dough in Zhou's father's hand and then at the meat filling he scooped up, he quickly stopped him.

Father Zhou looked at the dough in his daughter's hand, then looked at his own, and tore off half of it.

When the meat buns came out of the pot, Zhou Xiang tasted one first, "Well, Dad, try it, these buns are more delicious than the ones you made before."

As he said this, he finished the bun in two or three bites.

Father Zhou pinched one and tasted it. Hmm, it was soft and sweet. He remembered that his daughter had asked him to add a little bit of sugar to the meat filling, which should enhance the flavor.

Seeing her parents enjoying the meal, Zhou's mother said, "I want to try one too."

After two bites, he finished and said, "Well, this meat bun is very popular this time."

It was not until after ten o'clock that all the leavened dough in the three basins was wrapped and steamed.

On New Year's Eve, after breakfast, we start preparing lunch, picking up the broken honeycomb coal from the new stove and adding some coal blocks.

Kill the chickens and ducks, scald them in boiling water, pluck the feathers, and chop them into pieces.

A braised big carp, sweet and sour spare ribs, stewed old duck, braised chicken nuggets with dried beans, a plate of braised goose, a plate of vegetarian chicken, a plate of pig tails and pig stomachs, a plate of pig liver, stir-fried shredded pork with black fungus and yam, stir-fried kidney with dry spicy sauce, fried peanuts, and cold spinach.

There were twelve dishes in total, and they were all laid out. Zhou's father and mother put up couplets together, and Zhou wanted to go outside the yard to set off firecrackers.