Chapter 29 Part 1

After being unexpectedly woken by the alarm, Lu Ping could no longer fall back asleep.

He lay in bed playing on his phone for a while before getting up to wash up. The clothes he had changed out of yesterday were all still in the dirty laundry basket in the guest bathroom. Shen Yuze had said that the nanny would take them away, wash them clean, dry them, and send them back.

Perhaps because he had gotten up too early, Lu Ping didn’t find his clothes in the bathroom. It wasn’t great to keep wandering around someone else’s house in pajamas, so after thinking for a moment, he decided to go ask around the servants’ quarters.

Unexpectedly, as soon as he reached the living room, he spotted the figure of a middle-aged woman in the half-open kitchen.

The auntie wasn’t tall and had a slightly plump build. Her permed, curly hair was covered with a transparent hairnet, and she had an apron tied around her waist as she busied herself in the kitchen.

Hearing footsteps behind her, the plump auntie turned around and greeted him warmly: “Oh, you must be the young master’s classmate? Up so early? Did I wake you?”

Lu Ping quickly said no: “I usually get up around this time. I’m Lu Ping. Are you the Shen family’s nanny?”

The middle-aged woman nodded. She was indeed the Shen family’s nanny. Deng Hong, worried that her son wouldn’t be used to southern food, had specially sent the family’s nanny and chef to take care of him. The chef handled lunch and dinner, the main meals, while the nanny took care of breakfast and late-night snacks.

Lu Ping asked the nanny about his clothes, and she said they were still in the dryer and wouldn’t be ready for a while.

As a result, Lu Ping had no choice but to lounge around his room in his pajamas, bored.

He had never been one to sit idle. Noticing that the nanny was preparing breakfast, he curiously walked over to see what she was doing.

To his surprise, the nanny was watching a video tutorial on her phone, planning to make glutinous cake!

Seeing him lean in, the nanny explained: “Last night, the young master said he wanted to try some local breakfast specialties this morning. I prepared these on the fly, but I don’t know if they’ll turn out right. I’ve watched the tutorial—it seems similar to our northern big dumplings.”

Lu Ping thought Shen Yuze was really odd. If he wanted glutinous cake, he could have just told him. There was no need to make the nanny do it.

He glanced at the rice the nanny had prepared, reached out to grab a pinch, and slowly rubbed it between his fingertips. The grains were slender and milky white, slightly sticky when pinched: “You’re using glutinous rice?”

“Yeah.”

“But glutinous cake isn’t made with glutinous rice… It’s made with japonica rice.”

People in Jiaojiang loved all sorts of sticky, glutinous foods, and outsiders often assumed all sticky rice cakes were made with glutinous rice. In reality, the outer layer of glutinous cake was made by steaming japonica rice flour and pounding it. With pounding, the japonica rice became soft yet tough, full of elasticity and extensibility, like a slightly firm piece of playdough. If you used glutinous rice instead, you’d end up with mochi, which was too soft to hold the filling.

Hearing his explanation, the nanny slapped her forehead: “Oh no, then I’ll call the driver right away and have him buy some japonica rice!”

“No need for that…” Lu Ping’s head spun. It was just breakfast—did it warrant all this fuss? He looked at the already opened package of glutinous rice, estimated the portions for himself and Shen Yuze, and said, “The glutinous rice will get damp and go to waste if we don’t use it quickly. Shen Yuze just said he wanted local breakfast, right? We don’t have to make glutinous cake. How about we make chui yuan with this glutinous rice instead?”

“Chui yuan?”

“Chui yuan is…” Lu Ping couldn’t quite describe it, so he simply said, “How about I make it? You can assist me?”

The nanny didn’t want to trouble a guest, but Lu Ping didn’t give her a chance to refuse. He found a new apron and put it on—Chef Lu was officially on duty!

Chui yuan was another Jiaojiang City specialty breakfast. There was a chui yuan shop that had been open for over twenty years right at the entrance to Lu Ping’s alley. As a kid, Lu Ping often bought chui yuan with a single yuan. Breakfast shops here always had open kitchens—mixing dough, stir-frying fillings, and wrapping everything right in front of the customers. Lu Ping had seen it done so many times growing up that he’d learned how.

Lu Ping ground half the glutinous rice into powder with a grinder, mixed it with flour in a three-to-one ratio, added the right amount of cold water, and kneaded it into dough.

Glutinous rice was sticky and didn’t need resting. He rolled it into a long strip, then used a water-dipped knife to cut it into small dough balls about the size of a baby’s fist. With his right thumb pressing into each ball and his left fingers gripping it, he quickly shaped them into little teacup-like glutinous rice bowls. It looked easy when Lu Ping did it, but mastering the size and thickness of the rice bowl skin was an art—mess it up, and the outer layer would tear.

While Lu Ping made the chui yuan skins, the nanny auntie didn’t idle. He directed her to prepare the fillings.

Chui yuan came in meat and vegetarian versions. The meat filling was pork, onions, shiitake mushrooms, and zizania. The veggie one was glass noodles, tofu puffs, carrots, and wood ear mushrooms. Both fillings needed to be pre-cooked before stuffing into the skins. This was different from the north, where dumplings, buns, or stuffed pancakes used raw fillings wrapped in dough. Jiaojiang people stuffed their rice cake skins with cooked fillings.

The nanny auntie worked quickly and soon had both fillings ready.

Lu Ping took one “glutinous rice bowl,” filled it with stuffing, and with a gentle pinch at the tiger’s mouth, rolled the embryo in his palm a few times. A plump, cute chui yuan with an opening at the top exposing the meat filling was done.

To distinguish the fillings, he fully sealed the veggie ones and pinched a short little tail at the end, making them look like big-headed tadpoles.

Lu Ping’s fingers were nimble—he clearly did housework at home often. Rows of meat and veggie chui yuan quickly took shape under his hands, standing neatly in the steamer with their big bellies.

“There we go.” Lu Ping wiped the flour from his hands on his apron and instructed, “Don’t steam the glutinous rice skin too long, or it’ll collapse. Steam for ten minutes first, keep an eye on the fire, and when the surface turns slightly translucent, it’s ready to eat!”

Before he knew it, the nanny auntie had completely sided with him. Whatever the young boy said, she did. She stood guard by the stove, waiting for the chui yuan to come out.

With the chui yuan done, Lu Ping didn’t stop: He steamed the remaining half of the glutinous rice into dough, which was just ready now.

The glutinous rice was soft and sticky, pulling threads. Lu Ping dumped it all into a big bowl, slipped a plastic bag over a rolling pin, and began pounding the rice.

How could breakfast be just chui yuan? Lu Ping planned to make egg mochi next, but first, he had to pound the glutinous rice into mochi.

Seeing him struggle with the rolling pin, the nanny auntie offered: “We have a special kitchen hammer.”

She brought out a silver stainless steel mini-hammer. It was small but hefty. One side of the head was flat, the other covered in bumps.

Lu Ping was shocked: “Why is there a hammer in the kitchen?”

The nanny replied: “It’s for tenderizing steak. The chef special-ordered it from Germany.”

Lu Ping: “……………………”

…Fine.

Lu Ping swung the thousand-yuan mini-hammer, bang bang bang, clang clang clang, pounding the three-yuan bowl of glutinous mochi.

He hammered too forcefully, too focused, and didn’t notice the figure appearing behind him.

A voice suddenly sounded in his ear, accompanied by hot breath on his neck.

“Lu Ping, are you murdering the glutinous rice?”

Lu Ping shuddered, nearly dropping the hammer.

He instinctively covered his neck, wanting to dodge, but with the stove in front and a person behind, he had nowhere to go.

The boy whipped around, glaring at Shen Yuze, who had appeared in the kitchen at some point, both angry and annoyed.

“Shen Yuze, why do you walk so quietly?” Lu Ping, still shaken, brandished the hammer. “I’m warning you, I have a weapon here. Sneak up on me again, and I’ll smash you with this!”

Shen Yuze didn’t take his threat seriously. He casually took the hammer from Lu Ping’s hand and set it on the counter, asking: “Why aren’t you sleeping this early in the morning? You’re making such a racket—what are you hammering? I could hear it from the bedroom.”

Lu Ping felt a bit guilty: If not for that weird dream, why would he be up so early? But he couldn’t tell Shen Yuze the truth: Sorry, even though you kindly put me up last night, I dreamed of using you as a free English tutor and almost getting beaten up by you, so I was too scared to sleep and had to find something to do.