Chapter 45 Crab Feast
Gao Jialin has been living a comfortable life these days. Since he came to this world, he was busy overthrowing Gao Minglou and Qin Baosheng's gang. After entering university, he had to attend classes, write articles, and prepare activities. He had no time to enjoy life.
Now that he has come to revise the manuscript, he can finally relax for a few days. The revision suggestions given by the editorial department of "Mengya" are not complicated. Gao Jialin has created many characters with distinct personalities in "Young Friends Come to Meet", which is certainly an advantage, but there are too many supporting roles, which makes the main and secondary roles seem a bit unbalanced, and the image of the protagonist is not prominent enough.
So you just need to reduce the supporting roles, or increase the main roles, to make the proportions a little more harmonious.
Gao Jialin chose to add more scenes to the protagonist Sun Shaoping without hesitation. The manuscript fee is calculated according to the number of words. Who would not want to earn more money? It is not difficult to add more scenes to Sun Shaoping. The character's personality is already clear. The next step is to add a few events to him and continue to highlight these personality traits.
The editorial department of "Mengya" hoped that Gao Jialin could complete the revision of the novel within ten days. After writing for two days, Gao Jialin found that at this pace, he might be able to finish it in five days.
No, it's not possible. I finally got to the city and I don't have to go to class. Why should I go back so soon? So Gao Jialin slowed down his writing speed and wrote according to the time given by the editorial department.
Every morning when I wake up, I stroll to a nearby shop for breakfast. After breakfast, I chat with Niu Xinliang and listen to him tell some interesting stories about Shanghai. I then go back to the dormitory to start writing when someone urges me to do so.
I wrote until noon, then took Niu Xinliang out to find a restaurant and had a delicious meal. He was a good partner. If you asked him what delicious food there was in Shanghai, he knew it better than anyone else. From big restaurants to snack shops in the alleys, there was nothing he didn't know.
In this age of thrift and diligence, it is not easy to meet such a foodie. Niu Xinliang also feels comfortable eating with Gao Jialin, because he is not like others. Every time he talks about food excitedly, he will advise himself to save money and use it on key areas.
When eating, just talk about food and don’t talk about anything else. It’s fun to eat with people like this.
At the beginning, other editors had some opinions, but Gao Jialin took out the manuscripts he had revised in the past few days and said that it was the good food he had eaten in the past few days that inspired his writing.
The editors looked at the quality of the new manuscript and learned about the progress of the revisions, and said nothing.
On the day when Gao Jialin finished revising all the manuscripts and handed them in, Niu Xinliang came over mysteriously before leaving and said, "You're going back to school tomorrow. Today I'll take you to eat something really delicious!"
"What's delicious?" Gao Jialin asked hurriedly. Now he couldn't buy a car or a house, and he couldn't take the girl to a hotel to get a room. The only thing left was food, right?
"When it comes to food, it's all about the seasons. Eat the right food in the right season and in the right place. In Shanghai, there are a few things that are the best to eat: 'Hang knife fish on Qingming Festival, taste shad on Dragon Boat Festival, and eat hairy crab on Mid-Autumn Festival'! Qingming Festival and Dragon Boat Festival have long passed, knife fish and shad are not delicious enough now, and hairy crab is at its plumpest. A mouthful of hairy crab and a sip of rice wine. Hiss, that taste makes me drool just thinking about it!"
"When the knife fish and shad are in season next year, come back and I'll take you to eat them! Today, let's go eat hairy crabs first!"
"What are we waiting for? Let's go!" Gao Jialin was also aroused by his greed.
"The place we're going to today is a bit expensive." Niu Xinliang didn't move immediately. "If you go to the market to buy hairy crabs, they're 50 cents per pound. If you go here, they're 80 cents per pound. But the crabs in this restaurant are better, all of them are more than half a pound! Do you want to go there, or buy some hairy crabs and I'll cook them for you?"
"I don't mind if it's expensive, as long as it tastes good!" Half a pound of hairy crab? Gao Jialin had never seen this thing before. He used to eat four ounces of crab, and they were weighed together with the rope. Now that he heard about such a good thing, he couldn't wait to eat it.
"Hey, what you said is so right! Come on, let's take a stroll over there and free up some space in our stomach so that we can eat more crabs later!" Niu Xinliang felt that Gao Jialin was simply the most appetizing author he had ever met.
The two of them walked east along Julu Road, turned north at Maoming Road, and then turned from Weihai Road to Renmin Road. After walking about three kilometers, they stopped at Fuzhou Road. Niu Xinhua pointed at the sign in front of them and said, "In Shanghai, if Wang Baohe says he is the second best crab maker, no one dares to say he is the best!"
"Not only is the crab delicious, but the rice wine is even better. People call it 'the king of crabs and the ancestor of wine'. They have been brewing rice wine and crabs since the Qianlong period. They moved here during the Republic of China and became the first choice for Shanghai people to eat crabs! It suffered a certain impact in the past few years, but now it has reopened. The long-lost 'crab feast' has reappeared in Shanghai, attracting countless gourmets to come and taste it. You are lucky to have come at a good time!"
After entering and finding an empty seat to sit down, Niu Xinliang listed a bunch of signature dishes without even looking at the menu, including drunken crab, chrysanthemum-shaped crabs, crab roe and peony shrimps, crab roe tofu, crab stuffed with orange, etc. Gao Jialin took the menu and flipped through it, and added a few expensive dishes like crab roe and shark fin.
The waiter took the order and left. Niu Xinliang continued to tell Gao Jialin about the ins and outs of eating crabs. "Shi Jinmo, a famous doctor in the Republic of China, said about crabs, 'Sea crabs are not as good as river crabs, river crabs are not as good as river crabs, and river crabs are not as good as lake crabs.' This is biased. The taste of sea crabs is not that bad. Some species are still delicious. However, it is true that lake crabs are the best in the world."
As Niu Xinliang spoke, he took out a set of eight crab dishes from his pocket and placed them on the table. These ingredients, like perilla, rice wine, ginger tea, and vinegar, are essential ingredients for Shanghai people when eating crabs.
After chatting for a while, Gao Jialin smelled a strong aroma. The waiter brought the crabs up. At first glance, Gao Jialin was shocked. Are these hairy crabs? Each one weighed more than half a pound, with bright red color and full shells. He couldn't help drooling before he tasted them.
"Crabs like these are the real first-rate crabs. During the Republic of China, they sold for one dollar each! We are in for a treat today. Come, let's eat!" Niu Xinliang immediately picked up a crab and started to tear it apart using the eight crab pieces.
Gao Jialin didn't have the skills or the meticulousness, so he just picked up a female crab, opened the lid and saw a full load of crab roe. When he put it in his mouth, the rich and mellow sweetness rushed straight to his head.
After finishing the crab roe in two or three bites, Gao Jialin finally came to his senses. He carefully recalled the feeling of eating hairy crabs in modern times, and suddenly felt that these were two completely different things, one in heaven and one in hell, and there was no comparison at all.
In the 1980s, most of the enjoyments could not be compared with those in later generations. Only in terms of food, you could still find many delicacies that have become extinct in later generations. Just for this reason, you had to make a lot of money!
So he couldn't help but ask, "Teacher Niu, can I get the manuscript fee tomorrow morning?"
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