Fan Changyu found a bamboo basket to scoop up the offal, rich and overflowing with fragrance, letting the moisture drain away. The aroma of spices and meat blended together perfectly, and the stewed sauce color was extraordinarily beautiful—much superior to those cooked delicacies she had seen in the food shops during the day.

Changning eagerly stretched up by the stove to peek, but upon discovering that everything stewed was offal, she felt a bit disappointed: “No pig ears…”

She loved eating pig ears.

Fan Changyu lightly poked the pig intestines and pig stomach with a pair of chopsticks, easily piercing through. They were cooked extremely soft, tender, and deeply flavorful.

She said, “Tonight we will eat pork intestine noodles first. Tomorrow I will stew pig ears.”

Only then did Changning’s pair of eyes light up again.

Taking advantage of the vigorous fire in the stove, Fan Changyu scooped out the braising broth, washed the wok clean, kindled the water again, and threw in enough noodles for five people.

She instructed Changning: “Go over to Zhao Daniang’s house and tell them not to cook late-night food tonight. We will eat pork intestine noodles together shortly.”

Changning obediently answered, running off to the next door to deliver the message.

Cooking noodles did not take much effort. Fan Changyu had prepared seasonings in advance in four large sea-bowls and one small bowl. To make it even richer, she dug out a spoonful of rendered lard and added it in, scalding it with the boiling soup from the noodle pot. The lard and seasonings dissolved together in the bowls, and the fragrant aroma instantly wafted out.

大海碗 (dà hǎi wǎn - sea-bowl): Traditional large, deep porcelain bowls commonly used in Northern and rustic Chinese dining for serving large portions of soups or noodles.

猪油 (zhūyóu - rendered lard): A traditional staple fat in ancient Chinese cooking, highly valued for adding rich aroma and glossy texture to simple broth and noodle dishes.

Fan Changyu’s method was simple: scooping the noodles into the bowls, topping them with a layer of soft, chewy pork intestines cut into small segments, and finishing with a sprinkle of chopped scallions.

If her mother had been the one cooking noodles, she would also have simmered a pot of rich broth to use in place of the plain noodle water—that was what would make the flavor truly fragrant.

She placed her younger sister’s small bowl on the table for her to eat first, while she herself carried those three large bowls of pork intestine noodles over to the neighbor’s house.

Connecting the loft and the ground floor was a wooden staircase. When steady yet light footsteps echoed from the floorboards, Xie Zheng opened his eyes.

A moment later, the woman’s voice sounded from outside the door: “Are you awake?”

Xie Zheng said, “The door isn’t bolted.”

His voice was still raspy, but much better than yesterday.

Fan Changyu pushed open the door with her arm, holding an oil lamp in one hand and a bowl of piping hot soup noodles in the other as she walked in. “I only just heard Daniang say that this morning a large falcon fell straight out of the sky, plunging right into the window of that room downstairs and smashing the window frame to pieces. How could there be such a strange occurrence?”

Xie Zheng pressed his lips tightly together, staying silent without making a sound.

Even he had not expected that Gyrfalcon to be so foolish as to plunge straight down headfirst the moment it heard his whistle.

Fan Changyu stole a glance at his face and noted that although he remained pale, his overall complexion was much improved compared to yesterday.

Having already grown accustomed to his reticent disposition, she set the oil lamp on the table and said, “Fortunately that bird of prey did not hurt anyone. As for the window of the room downstairs, it will have to wait until Dashu is free to repair it. Though this loft you are currently occupying is somewhat narrow, it is quiet at least.”

Xie Zheng finally uttered a faint “En”, serving as a response.

Fan Changyu held out the bowl of noodles and passed it over: “I cooked a bowl of noodles, make do with this for a meal.”

The word she used was 将就 (Jiāngjiu), a common, humble idiomatic expression used by hosts to politely minimize the quality of the food offered.

Xie Zheng had already caught the fragrant aroma. That layer of food spread over the noodle bowl—something he had never seen before—was giving off the very meat fragrance that had wafted through the whole alley earlier.

That smell tempted the hunger in his belly to grow even stronger. Having swallowed bitter, sickening medicinal decoctions and plain porridge for days on end, calling the bowl of noodles before his eyes a feast would not be an exaggeration.

He uttered a word of thanks, took the noodle bowl, picked up a mouthful with his chopsticks, and began to eat.

Bound by smooth noodles and mellow soup, it was not made from any high-grade flour, yet at this moment he felt it was delicious beyond any noodles he had tasted before. The meat spread atop the noodles was soft, tender, and chewy, yielding an even richer, lingering flavor with every bite.

Even given that he prided himself on having tasted countless delicacies, he could not identify what this was.

Xie Zheng asked, “What is this?”

Fan Changyu was just preparing to hurry back and eat her own bowl of pork intestine noodles, but hearing him ask, she answered, “Pork intestine.”

The hand Xie Zheng raised with the chopsticks paused. Upon hearing the word intestine, an ill omen already rose in his heart.

Fan Changyu, seeing that he did not seem to quite know what pork intestine was, put it even more plainly: “It’s pig large intestine.”

His complexion turned instantly.

Fan Changyu had seen people who did not like eating pig offal, but the expression on this man’s face as he ate just now did not look like he found the food unpalatable either. For his complexion to turn so ugly now, she truly could not figure out the reason behind it, and asked in confusion: “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

This sentence was answered with some difficulty.

Xie Zheng quietly drew several deep breaths before suppressing that wave of nausea.

Fan Changyu was still thinking about her own fat intestine noodles; if she did not head back to eat soon, the noodles would likely turn to mush. So she said, “Then I shall head back first. When you finish eating, leave the bowl on the cabinet to the side. Daniang will come up to fetch it later.”

The room door clicked softly shut, followed by the sound of her footsteps descending the stairs.

Xie Zheng looked at the bowl of noodles in his hands, his brows tightly furrowed as he hesitated over whether to keep eating.

It was not as though he were pampered and delicate. In times past, when marching with the army grew arduous, he had chewed on tree bark and grass roots; only, he had never eaten an animal’s large intestine.

Pig’s large intestine? Was that not precisely what held pig dung?

Just thinking about it made it difficult to swallow.

Yet, considering the injuries all over his body, this bowl of noodles was also the richest, most nourishing food brought to him over these past two days.

Xie Zheng struggled for a while, but finally picked up the noodles once more, stiffly moving them toward his mouth.

When Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on a man, it will first exercise his mind with suffering, and strain his bones and sinews with toil…

This is a famous passage from the classical Confucian philosopher Mencius (Mengzi), written during the Warring States period. The full passage reflects on how hardship and trial temper a great leader's character. Xie Zheng here recites this high-minded philosophical classic to mentally justify enduring the "hardship" of eating pig intestine 🤣.

It was actually quite fragrant.

·•—–٠✤٠—–•·

That night, Xie Zheng, who rarely ever dreamed, inexplicably dreamed of that woman who had saved him. In the dream, that woman joyfully herded a pig, and as she walked along, she suddenly drew a large cleaver, sliced open the pig’s belly, pulled out a long pig intestine, and looked at him, saying: “This is pork intestine, I will cook it for you.”

The squealing of pigs inside the dream and outside the dream overlapped, abruptly startling Xie Zheng awake. Only then did he realize he was lying in bed.

The pig squeals from next door were still wailing. Xie Zheng took a look outside the window; the sky was just barely breaking dawn.

However, movements could already be heard from downstairs—likely the elderly couple had gotten up to go over and help that woman slaughter pigs.

Recalling the dream he had just had, Xie Zheng’s expression was exceedingly unsightly.

Herding pigs, slaughtering pigs, pig large intestines… everything connected to that woman seemed to inevitably involve pigs.

He pressed the bridge of his brow and closed his eyes once more, trying hard to block out the sharp, piercing squeals of pigs outside.

Endure just a few more days. The Gyrfalcon had already carried a message back; his longtime subordinates would soon locate him, and before long he would be able to leave this place.

He would leave behind a generous sum of wealth for that woman and the elderly couple as a reward.

In the Fan family’s backyard, Fan Changyu had already bound the pig to the slaughtering bench with thick rope. She took after her father, born with extraordinary strength; a pig that took several grown men to hold down, she could pin down all by herself.

This slaughtering bench in her home was not made of wood, but rather a stone bench her father had specifically commissioned someone to carve.

Once the pig was bound onto it, no matter how it struggled, it could not shift the bench by even a fraction, saving the trouble of holding down the pig’s tail as well.

The long and sharp bleeding knife stabbed straight in from beneath the pig’s neck, penetrating almost up to the handle. The sharp, piercing pig squeals ceased in an instant as pig blood flowed down along the blade edge, filling a wooden basin below the stone bench until it was completely brimful.

In pig slaughtering, a clean kill with a single knife stroke was considered lucky, and as much blood as possible had to be drained.

Auntie Zhao, who had come over to help, caught sight of the pig blood basin and immediately grinned widely: “This basin of pig blood will be enough to eat for several days.”

Pig blood was used in rustic Chinese cooking, often set into blood tofu or blood pudding. Leaving no part of the animal to waste was essential for frugal households.

Fan Changyu did not make a sound. Withdrawing the bleeding knife, her expression was rare in its solemn coldness, with a few specks of blood spray spattered across her face and sleeves.

Every time she wielded the blade to slaughter a pig, she seemed to turn into a different person altogether, making people hesitant to draw near her—likely the peculiar ferocity characteristic of those who take life for a living.

Having drained the pig blood dry, Fan Changyu untied the ropes and dragged the pig over to the large pot where hot water was boiling. Scooping up the already boiling water, she scalded the pig bristles through before beginning to scrape them off with a hair-scraping knife.

Changning poked her head out from the doorway, peeking into the courtyard. Auntie Zhao said, “Ningniang, go play outside. Little children should not watch such things, or you will have nightmares at night.”

Changning whispered softly, “I am not afraid,” yet still ambled sluggishly outside.

Fan Changyu finished scraping the pig bristles and rinsed it once more with water. Requiring almost no help from Carpenter Zhao or Auntie Zhao, she heaved the pig up by herself, hanging it onto an iron hook on a courtyard pillar, then used a splitting cleaver to cleave the pig into two halves.

One half remained hanging on the iron hook, while the other half was hoisted by her onto a doorboard mounted upon two trestle benches to divide the pork.

The elderly Zhao couple watched in dumbfounded amazement, uttering softly, “This girl truly takes after her father…”

Having finished dividing the pork, Fan Changyu was in a hurry to haul it to the meat market on a wooden handcart to sell. As for the 20 jin of meat ordered yesterday by Cook Li from Yixiang Restaurant, she entrusted Carpenter Zhao to help deliver it over.

After a moment’s thought, she decided to packed some stewed offal for Cook Li as well—not that she was seeking to build a stewed delicacies business with him in the future; he was a grand chef at a major restaurant, and she held no mind to show off her slight skill before a master. It was purely to express her gratitude for Cook Li patronizing her business.

Show off before a master / Displaying skill before Lu Ban (班门弄斧 - Bānmén nòngfǔ): A classic Chinese idiom derived from wielding an axe before Lu Ban, the legendary ancient master carpenter. It means to foolishly display one's novice skills in front of an expert.

Upon arriving at the meat market, Fan Changyu was considered among the early arrivals. Only a scattering of shops had opened their doors, and the butchers were currently laying out the pork they were to sell today in front of their storefronts.

When an acquaintance caught sight of her, they could not help but be surprised: “Yo, Changyu, you’re opening up your family’s pork shop again?”

Fan Changyu answered with a crisp yes.

She opened the doors of her family’s shop, which had been tightly shut for over a month. The interior was packed clean and tidy, with every single item still placed in the exact spot her father had been accustomed to keeping it—only covered in a light layer of accumulated dust.

Recalling her father, Fan Changyu felt a wave of soreness at her heart. Knowing that now was not the time for sorrowful grief, she quickly suppressed her emotions, fetched water to wipe down the inside and outside of the shop, and only then began arranging the fresh pork slaughtered this morning onto the butcher’s block. The offal braised last night was also set out upon it.

It was not until the sixth mark of the Chen hour (approximately 8:30 AM) that a scattering of people began arriving at the market to buy groceries.

辰时六刻 (Chénshí liù kè): Traditional Chinese timekeeping divided the day into twelve two-hour periods (shíchen). The Chen hour spans from 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM. Since each hour was further divided into eight kè (approx. 15 minutes each), the "sixth mark of Chen" corresponds to approximately 8:30 AM.

The location of the Fan family’s meat shop was advantageous; coupled with the fact that the other shops were staffed by stout, burly men or older women, her standing there as a young maiden made some shopping aunties feel she might be easier to bargain with. Whenever they passed by, they would ask how much the meat was.

Fan Changyu then smilingly told the other party the price, adding that as the shop was reopening today, buying one jin of pork would come with one liang (1 jin = 10 liang) of stewed offal free, just for good luck and celebration.

Hearing that purchasing fresh meat came with complimentary stewed delicacies, the aunties could not help but be tempted; most ended up buying a cut of pork at Fan Changyu’s stall.

Right at the opening of the market, Fan Changyu’s shop was the only one among the neighboring pork stalls to successfully strike several deals right away.

The butcher at the meat shop across the street looked on with envy, shouting out: “Fan Er’s daughter, doing business means you can’t break the rules! Everyone selling meat in this market charges the same price—what is the meaning of you throwing in free gifts with your meat?”

Fan Changyu knew that this man had been on bad terms with her father in the past, yet she was not intimidated by him in the least, answering articulately: “Guo Shu is truly wronging me with that! Isn’t the meat sold in my shop priced the exact same as everyone else’s? How have I broken any rules? Throwing in extra bits is because my shop is reopening today to seek good fortune. Which trade rule states that this isn’t allowed? Could it be that Guo Shu sees that I no longer have parents and thinks I, a lone orphan girl, am easy to bully?”

The other party could not win the argument against Fan Changyu, his sallow face flushing deep red: “What a sharp tongue! I can’t outtalk you!”

A neighboring butcher who was on friendly terms with the Fan family chimed in to help: “Alright, Old Guo, Changyu yatou is only selling one pig today, why fuss and quibble with a junior?”

丫头 (Yātou): Literally translates to "girl," "little girl," or "young lass." It is an affectionate, informal way an older generation neighbor or elder addresses a younger girl in rural/historical Chinese culture. One fun story about this term is historically, Yātou referred to young girls' hair bun hairstyles (resembling two small hair knots or "twin horns"). Over time, it became a common, casual, and warm address used by elders, relatives, or older neighbors toward young women or girls they have known since childhood.

Bearing the reputation of bullying a junior did not sound pleasant either, so Butcher Guo hollered: “Fine, today you go ahead and keep giving away your free gifts, but tomorrow it won’t be allowed!”

Fan Changyu had originally only planned to give free extras for a single day anyway; starting tomorrow, these stewed delicacies were meant to be sold. She replied: “Naturally.”

Only then did Butcher Guo drop the matter.

Simply waiting for people to approach and ask still made the meat sell quite slowly; and Butcher Guo across the street was so angry his face was nearly twisted out of shape, any folk who had a mind to ask prices at his shop didn’t dare go over after catching sight of his fierce and menacing demeanor.

Since she was only offering the bonus gift for a single day, Fan Changyu figured she ought to spread the word as much as possible.

Once the foot traffic in the market grew heavy, she acted decisively and began shouting her wares: “Fresh pork for sale! Buy one jin of pork and get one liang of stewed offal free!”

This hawking was exceedingly effective. Quite a crowd gathered around immediately to ask how the pork was sold.

While driving bargains with the customers, Fan Changyu handled her blade nimbly to chop and slice the meat, occasionally putting on a pained expression to yield a few wen in price. Before the morning market was even half over, the pork in her shop had been almost entirely snapped up, yielding a far better result than Fan Changyu had anticipated.

The face of Butcher Guo across the street had already grown as foul and stink-laden as his own privy door.

Fan Changyu turned a blind eye to it. After tidying up her family’s meat shop, she stowed her butcher blades into her shoulder cloth pouch, closed the shop doors, and set off carrying a bulging money pouch to the livestock market to purchase two more pigs.

Passing by Butcher Guo’s shop, he snarled menacingly: “If you give away any of those rubbish extras tomorrow, don’t say I’m bullying a lone orphan girl!”

Fan Changyu let out a cold, sharp huff through her nose, not bothering to give him any mind.

Tomorrow she certainly wouldn’t give them away for free; she was going to sell them!

Walking along the road, Fan Changyu did some rough math in her head. For this ninety-jin pig, excluding the pig head and offal, the meat accounted for around 90 jin. Sold entirely at fresh meat prices, her gross profit for today came out to just over two strings of wen.

One string of wen (copper coin) typically consisted of 1000 wen bound together through their center holes with hemp cord.

The pig head and offal braised for tomorrow’s sale would bring in yet another source of income!

Subtracting the capital spent to buy the pig, this single pig yielded a net profit of over one string of coins!

Feeling the heavy, solid weight of the money pouch at her chest, Fan Changyu’s footsteps grew a bit lighter, and the slight unpleasantness from Butcher Guo picking a fight was tossed entirely beyond the nine heavens.

Yet just as she stepped out of the meat market and had not even entered the livestock market, she heard someone behind her urgently shouting her name: “Changyu! Changyu!”

Fan Changyu looked back and saw that it was actually Carpenter Zhao, who had run all the way over in a rush, his face filled with anxiety.

Fan Changyu hurriedly asked, “What happened, Zhao Shu?”

Zhao Carpenter could barely catch his breath: “Hurry back home and see! Your Eldest Uncle brought people from the gambling den and smashed your door open, turning the place upside down looking for the land deeds! How could these old bones of mine and your Daniang possibly hold them back?!”