"It will be too late if you notice it then." Duan Tingxuan was very satisfied with the situation. He pulled Su Nuannuan, who was still in shock, and said with a smile, "My wife, let's go downstairs to eat. You have to adapt quickly."
Being... despised.
She is a modern time traveler who has been influenced by countless TV dramas and movies, and has successfully played the role of an extra dozens of times. However, she was despised by an ancient man who has no acting skills at all. It's embarrassing, too embarrassing. It seems that she has to work hard. She wants to use this trip to Jiangnan to make the scumbag fully realize that she is not just a foodie, but also a very successful actor... Hmm! It seems that in this era, actors are not a very promising profession.
Su Nuannuan was thinking wildly in her mind. When she came to her senses, she was already standing on the dock. She blinked her eyes, looked at the dozens of large ships on the river, and murmured, "What are we... going to do?"
"Take a boat to Jiangnan." Duan Tingxuan looked at his wife worriedly: "Lan'er, are you stupid? Of course you have to take a boat to go to Jiangnan. If everything goes well, you can reach Suzhou in ten days."
Siping also expressed great concern about the acting skills of the grandmother he had always admired: "Sister-in-law, you are the highlight of this trip to Jiangnan, so you must not be stupid." After careful consideration, Duan Tingxuan decided to dress up as a cook, and then take his cook wife and his younger brother who was learning cooking to Mingyu Villa to seek refuge with his cousin, and find a job there by the way, so Su Nuannuan is of course an indispensable role in this, and these two people have to be taught cooking by her. If he teaches in the mansion, he is afraid that someone with ulterior motives will find out, so he can only sharpen his gun before the battle, but the young marquis is a genius, and he is very confident in his learning ability.
Being despised by Duan Tingxuan was fine, but now even Siping, a servant, dared to despise her. The grandmother was furious. She completely forgot about the equality she advocated for everyone. She looked at Siping with a squint and suggested "viciously": "My husband, I think Cheng'er is too smart. This is not good. It's better to let him act like an idiot, so that I don't have to teach him cooking skills."
"Big...sister-in-law, spare me." Siping was shocked when he heard this. Pretending to be a fool? He had never done this before. It was too difficult and would definitely be a mistake. Fearing that the young marquis, who was obedient to his wife, would agree to Su Nuannuan's sinister proposal, Siping hurriedly bowed to Su Nuannuan.
"Okay. Stop it. The boat is coming."
Duan Tingxuan glared at Siping, but did not follow Su Nuannuan's suggestion, which made Siping feel fortunate to have escaped death.
There were all kinds of peddlers and ordinary people visiting relatives and friends on the big ship. There were also quite a few women, and Duan Tingxuan, Su Nuannuan and Siping, the "family of three", were not very conspicuous in the crowd. The journey was indeed smooth. The big ship went downstream, and after three or four days, the scenery along the way changed. It was no longer the early spring season that seemed to still have the bleakness of winter. The shore gradually became green, and after another three or four days, it was just when the sun was setting. We passed a peach blossom forest. The owner of the ship was probably also a Jiangnan person. He loved peach blossoms, so the ship moored at the shore.
The setting sun, peach blossoms, and the vast river. How could someone who yearns for romance like Su Nuannuan miss such a beautiful view? So she ran out of the cabin with great interest. Although Duan Tingxuan was a playboy, he really didn't care much about these charming views. But since his wife liked them, he naturally loved her too. So he could only pretend to be happy and accompany Su Nuannuan to the deck.
"There are not many flowers in this peach forest, but in a few days, it will be a beautiful sight like clouds and mist. Look, there are people living in the distant valley." Su Nuannuan pointed at the curling smoke rising into the sky in the distance, and excitedly shouted to Duan Tingxuan in a low voice, her tone full of yearning.
"If you like it, I will have someone buy a house here. When we have time in the future, we can come here to live a leisurely pastoral life for a few days. How about it?" Although the young marquis lacks romantic cells, he can't help but be moved if he can spend the days with his beloved in such a poetic picture.
Before he finished speaking, he heard a rough voice behind him laughing, "There are so many beautiful sights in Jiangnan. What's the big deal about a peach blossom forest in such a small village? If you want to find a place to retire, you might as well go a little further. There are many picturesque places in the suburbs of Suzhou and Hangzhou. Now the emperor is wise and has cracked down on pirates after opening the sea. That area is no longer the troubled place it used to be. It has become a peaceful land of fish and rice. It's best to retire there. But you are still young. It seems that you don't need to think about retirement so early, right?"
Looking back, he saw that it was the captain of the boat. Duan Tingxuan smiled and said, "You are a really enthusiastic boatman. I was just talking to my wife about this, but now you have moved me. If there is really such a place, why do we have to wait until retirement? We can live there now."
The boat captain laughed and said, "Yes, yes. Living in a place like that makes you feel like a fairy." He then sang loudly, "At that time, I only remember going deep into the mountains, how many times did Qingxi reach Yunlin? In spring, the water is full of peach blossoms, and I can't tell where the fairyland is."
This was Wang Wei's poem Peach Blossom Spring. Duan Tingxuan and Su Nuannuan smiled at each other. They didn't expect that the captain of the boat also knew this poem and sang it in a folk song tune, which had a somewhat graceful and charming tone. However, his voice was too hoarse, so it sounded a bit out of place.
As they were talking, a few boatmen came to the side of the boat. They jumped in with bare chests, ignoring the cold water. Su Nuannuan was startled and Duan Tingxuan frowned. The boat boss was a little embarrassed and smiled as he touched his head, "Now is the best time to eat pufferfish. These guys can't wait any longer, right? I stopped the boat early today just to let them go fishing. I am sorry for being rude to you."
Su Nuannuan smiled and said, "It's okay. We are just ordinary people. There is no need to be so particular. But... going to catch pufferfish in this weather? Can people bear it? Although it is spring, the river water is still very cold, right?"
The boat captain laughed and said, "We all grew up on both sides of this river. Not to mention now, even in winter, we sometimes jump into the water to catch fish. What's a little bit of cold water?"
Even Duan Tingxuan was a little surprised, and Su Nuannuan was also speechless, thinking to herself, I didn't expect that the guys on this boat are actually a group of winter swimming enthusiasts. However, compared with the winter swimmers in the ice and snow in Harbin, their level is not the highest.
The captain was probably worried about his crew's harvest, so he was a little absent-minded when talking. Duan Tingxuan and Su Nuannuan were also curious, so they came to the side of the boat a little further away. Duan Tingxuan whispered, "I've always heard that puffer fish is delicious, but it's poisonous, so we don't have it to eat in the mansion. But I don't know if this captain has any unique skills to prepare puffer fish. If they prepare it well, we can buy some to eat. Do you know how to cook this kind of fish?"
Su Nuannuan also whispered, "The poison of this puffer fish is all in its blood and internal organs. If you know how to clean it, take out the internal organs and don't let any blood get into the meat, you won't be poisoned. Let's wait and see how they clean it. If they can really clean it up, it will be a treat. Buy a few. Didn't you say you'll be able to get to Suzhou in another day? Then find a place to stay and cook it. I've only eaten it once when I was a kid, and it tastes really delicious."
"I don't believe it. Can it be more delicious than sea bass?" Duan Tingxuan laughed, but heard Su Nuannuan proudly say, "Even beauties are different. Can you tell the difference between Aunt Jing and Grandma Lan? This puffer fish is the same as sea bass. Anyway, you will know when you eat it."
As the couple was talking in low voices, a few more people came out of the cabin in twos and threes. Two women went ashore to pick peach blossoms. Su Nuannuan also wanted to go over, but after thinking about it, she decided that between peach blossoms and puffer fish, puffer fish was of course more important. So she made up her mind and ignored the peach blossoms. This is the logic of a foodie.
After about 25 minutes, the guys jumped onto the side of the boat one after another. It turned out that they each had a net bag with them when they went into the water. In each of their net bags, there were several big-bellied pufferfish struggling. The guys threw the net bags to the boat boss and said with a smile, "Uncle Qiang, it depends on your cooking skills. Please remove the blood. Don't let us die for such a small amount of food."
The boat captain laughed and scolded, "You little bastards, just rest assured. I have been sailing on this canal for more than 30 years. Since I was 20 years old, there has never been a year when I didn't handle 100 to 180 pufferfish. I can clean them up with my eyes closed."
After saying that, he sat on the deck and started to kill fish. His movements were very skillful and he finished four or five fish in just a quarter of an hour. Just as Su Nuannuan said, all the poisonous parts such as blood and internal organs were removed completely. The processed fish were placed on a large plate and cut open from the middle, revealing a fresh, transparent blue color.
Duan Tingxuan thought about what Su Nuannuan said, and he felt his appetite growling. He quickly asked loudly, "Boatman, are you selling this fish?"
"Sell them, just keep a few for your own consumption. Since you can make money, why not?" The boat captain laughed heartily, so Duan Tingxuan immediately took out his purse from his arms, asked the price and counted out eighty coins, tied them with a rope and handed them to a waiter, then squatted down and picked the fish with Su Nuannuan. Amid the two people's discussions of "this one... this one is fat..." and "this one... this one is fresh...", the waiters rolled their eyes frequently, thinking how funny it is, they were just caught from the river, why don't you find a stale one to show us? Besides, it's just the beginning of spring, and the puffer fish that has been raised for a whole winter, how can it not be fat?
Little did they know that this was just the fun of Duan Tingxuan and Su Nuannuan. For foodies, what could be more joyful than picking coveted ingredients? Six fat pufferfish were selected, put in a net bag, and brought to the cabin for Siping to put away. It was a pity that there was no small kitchen on the boat, otherwise Su Nuannuan really wanted to show off her skills right now. The young marquis was also a little impatient, but thinking of the important task of this trip, it was better not to attract attention, so he suppressed his greed.
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