After returning from Putuo, she continued to complete the paintings in cooperation with Shen Ce in her house.

"This part is very similar to Shanghe Tu." My sister was beside her, looking at the unfolded painting carefully, looking at the bridges, pavilions and pavilions, the teahouses and restaurants on the river bank, the painting boats on the river... as detailed as the bow of the painting boat, Everyone in the boat has a different demeanor.

"Well," Zhaozhao said, "he painted Chai Sang, like the painting of the river, I painted the landscape of the southern border, on both sides of the scroll, it is the background."

"There's a beauty here." My sister pointed to one place.

There were more than a dozen painting boats on the river, and she pointed to the largest one. It was very different. The painting boats next to it were mainly women, but this one was all men. "Why are there men on this boat?" She wondered while watching.

"You don't know what you drew?" My sister laughed.

"I haven't paid attention to the details of Chai Sang." After all, Shen Ce had to carefully describe the guests in a restaurant, down to the signs outside each shop, and the horses pulling the carriages on the roadside were different. "Where are the beauties?"

The elder sister pointed to a slender figure in the cabin: "The whole boat is full of men, and this one alone looks like a woman. According to ancient customs, this should be a beauty who is hidden from outsiders."

Is that so? Zhaozhao looked carefully at the shadow in the cabin.

Shen Ce entered the studio.

She heard the footsteps, turned around and asked, "Is there a girl in the painting boat?"

His eyes did not change, and he approached her.

"Who is it?" She guessed the allusions. "Is there a special story?"

Shen Ce condensed the beauty's figure: "This is the wife of the lord of Chai Sang at that time. At the age of fourteen, she was famous in both the north and the south for her beauty.

"At that time, girls can't go out casually?"

He shook his head: "At that time, there were no major defenses for men and women, and there would be no such restrictions on women. It's just that she was willing to hide because she was afraid that she would be kidnapped and threaten the safety of the Lord of Chaisang."

To protect a person by hiding oneself, it is easy to hide for a while, but for a lifetime... How many people can do it?

"They must be on good terms," ​​she said.

"They have been childhood sweethearts since childhood, and their relationship has always been the same. After that, there have been twists and turns..." He stopped.

"A lover is married?" she asked expectantly.

He looked at her: "Yes, we'll be married eventually."

The guests that Shen Ce was going to entertain had seen the two sisters and left soon. Sister and Zhaozhao stayed in the studio. Due to Shen Ce's remarks, the two sisters became more interested in the details of this picture. The elder sister looked at every inch, and Zhaozhao spoke every inch. In fact, it was what Shen Ce explained to her during the intervals of painting.

"People can draw the river map because they are in their own dynasty," my sister admired sincerely. "He was able to draw a city a thousand years ago just like the photo. How much information does it take? How many years did it take to prepare?"

"His major is related to history, he has always been interested in Chai Sang, and he has checked a lot of historical materials." Shen Ce told her.

The elder sister nodded and asked, "Is the record of Chai Sang so detailed in the book, it used to be the capital?"

"It's not a capital, it's a military town..." Zhaozhao was asked by her sister.

Without her sister's questioning, she would not have thought about it deeply. Even the capitals of Luoyang, Chang'an and Jiankang at that time did not necessarily have such detailed records, as detailed as every boat on the water and shops in the streets.

"Maybe, a lot of it is what he imagined." Zhao Zhao understood this.

Before closing the painting scroll, she looked at the painting boat again, and saw a picture in the cabin, but the details were missing, but a line of very small words caught her attention.

"Our name." My sister caught these two words at the same time.

She nodded, feeling very subtle.

After the elder sister left, she asked Shen Ce the meaning of this line of words. He seemed to expect her to ask such a question, and explained: "The master of Chaisang is a famous general in the south, and his wife often writes this sentence in the military map, asking for a auspicious."

Zhaozhao has light, and it is beneficial to conduct troops.

Now that think about it, she is indeed his blessing. As soon as Zhaozhao left, he lost his sight and could no longer see the light.

At night, Shen Yan's son Shao Shao refused to leave and stayed with them in the studio.

Mount Luojia is on the far right side of the scroll, and the pen is finished.

She watched the whole picture, but she still couldn't shake her doubts: "I haven't seen what books you have been reading in the past six months. How many related books have you read in the past?"

"I can't count. When I was a child, Macau hadn't returned, and people around me, including myself, didn't know much about the mainland. My father left me in the library and asked me to read and understand it myself," he said. He believes that if you want children to identify with their own nation, you must start with history. Five thousand years of history is a treasure and something more powerful than language education. So the books I read at that time were very Miscellaneous, not only customs and humanities, religious history, but also cooking and food.”

"Cooking the diet?"

He nodded: "Children are not interested in watching things that are too deep. It is best to start with diet."

It is.

There are a lot of books related to the Southern and Northern Dynasties in the studio. He took out a few books from the bookshelf, opened one of them and handed it to her: "The food culture, there is nothing in the world that can surpass China. This is a book from the Northern Dynasties, and at that time we had a stir-fry. , frying, frying, roasting, roasting, steaming, boiling, simmering, simmering, sauce, pickling, glutinousness, and intoxication. The above also introduces wine making, sauce, tempeh, vinegar, cheese and desserts, watch slowly ,It is interesting."

Zhao Zhaowei didn't have time to pick up the book, but Shen Shao grabbed it first: "Recipes of the Southern and Northern Dynasties?"

"No," he tapped Shen Shen Shao's forehead, "not just diet."

"What I just said, will my uncle and grandpa do it?" Shen Shao asked, "Have you tried it?"

He didn't answer. He understood it so clearly because the cooking methods recorded in this book "Qi Min Yao Shu" were exactly a hundred years before and after his last life. All his cooking skills are due to a greedy sister.

"Also," he said to Zhaozhao, "Jiangnan likes to eat pickled duck eggs, and the coastal area likes fried glutinous rice. It's all recorded."

This is what she used to love to eat.

"Then there were pickled duck eggs and roasted clams?" She was even more surprised by this.

Two listeners, one big and one small, were successfully led by Shen Ce to mislead and head straight for Chinese food culture.

"We Chinese people are the best at eating," he led the two of them out of the studio. "The Western Zhou Dynasty porpoise is one of the Eight Treasures. This book has more details. At the time, both porpoise and steamed dolphin were very popular."

After the great victory, he liked to make dolphins with his own hands and give food to his subordinates.

Shen Ce led them to the restaurant, and the faint yellow light from the paper lantern, intertwined with the moonlight, guided them.

"Remove the five internal organs, fill the belly of the pig with mao ru, pass it through oak wood, and roast it on a slow fire." Sake is smeared and colored, and lard and sesame oil are also used to continuously smear the outer skin. "The skin is like amber, and the flesh is , the entrance disappears, and the shape is like Ling Xue, and the paste is moisturizing."

If there is wine, it is the best reward after the war.

While we were talking, we were outside the restaurant. The lights are bright here, and there are familiar backs busy.

This is a surprise for her, the old butler couple from Hong Kong are putting a plate of roast suckling pig slices on the table. When her mother-in-law heard that Zhaozhao had suffered a crime, she felt guilty and couldn't sleep, thinking that the Shen family in Macau did not take good care of her. To make up for it, she and the old housekeeper brought the helpers of the bungalow and flew in to take care of their food and daily life.

Because of her old age, my mother-in-law has not cooked for a long time. She will cook a table for the old and young of the Shen family during the New Year and festivals. Today, she is staring at snacks and making snacks. It has not been seen for several years. Shen Shao said that he took the light of his aunt and grandmother.

Shen Ce poured two cups of drinks from the freezer and brought them to one big and one small.

"What is it?" Granny asked.

"Prepare it for my aunt and grandmother," Shen Shao picked it up and drank it, "it is said to be a natural protein drink, made by my uncle."

The old butler frowned: "What did you squeeze it from?" As if questioning the recipe of the drink.

Shen Ce grew up under the watch of these two old people since he was a child, and was treated as an outsider by them for the first time, lest his formula be incorrect and he would drink Zhaozhao badly. "Added peanuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, almonds and pecans, the usual stuff," he explained in a good-natured way.

The old butler felt a little relieved.

After the helpers finished their work, they gathered in the restaurant for supper.

And Shen Ce brought one big and one small, as well as the old housekeeper and his wife, eating and chatting at the open-air table outside the restaurant. Her mother-in-law confirmed to Shen Ce that the young Shen Ce spent all day in the library and was addicted to the food culture for a period of time. In those two years, when she saw pork, roast duck and dipping sauces on the dinner table, she would quote the Tang poem "Steamed pork with garlic sauce, fried pork with garlic sauce Duck with salt and pepper", when I saw the soup noodles, I said that it was called soup cakes, water yin, and said that the noodles were food of Chinese origin, so I would like to recite the sentence Jinfu "The snot is frozen in the nose, the frost is congealed outside the mouth, and the deficiency is relieved, and the soup cake is the best. ".

All kinds of things often make the family laugh constantly at the dinner table.

In the middle of the night, Shen Shao went to sleep, and the two watched a movie in the audio-visual room next to the bedroom. She still had a lot of aftertastes: "What about the steamed pork in the Southern and Northern Dynasties? Is it the same as now?"

He shook his head: "It's more complicated. The meat is half-cooked, marinated in bean drum juice, and the sorghum rice is soaked in thick drum juice to turn yellow to make steamed rice. Finally, ginger, orange peel, orange leaves, steamed rice and pork should be placed in the In a kind of steaming utensil called zeng, it takes three times as long to cook rice."

He is the most familiar with this dish because she loves it the most.

"Want to eat?" he asked.

"It sounds a bit troublesome, will my mother-in-law do it?"

"She won't, I will."

Zhaozhao tilted his head and looked at him.

"I'll make it for you tomorrow." He understood.

"What about the cannonball, the authentic kind?"

"do all."

"Anything else to do?"

"Bai Lun Pork, it's almost the same as Bai Lun Pork," he said after thinking for a while. "I'll make it for you tomorrow. I'll make it together with the cannon, steam, and Bailuo. You can try them all."

The lights were turned off, and he pulled out a CD and shoved it into the CD player.

The screen was lit by the film and became the only light source in the room.

This audio-visual room is exactly the same as that of the small building in Hong Kong. Zhaozhao never asked why he decorated it like this. It's more of a tacit understanding, like the room she's renovating in Montreal, and they both want to stop the time when she's eighteen.

That year, they had their most hazy and unspeakable heartbeat.

He sat on the sofa and hugged her gently into his arms.

She fell lazily, resting her head on his lap, dabbing her fingers aimlessly on his lap, waiting for the movie to begin.

Before the title jumped out, it was the darkest time in the whole house. In this secret, Shen Ce suddenly realized: the happiest moment should be like now, every night that can say "tomorrow" effortlessly.