Hou Xiaoliang followed her orders exactly and swiftly went back and forth. He let the line loose and then pulled it quickly back as he dragged the struggling fish right and left.
“Avoid pushing it head on and use its strength against it. Think of it as borrowing the opponent’s force to easily push aside a thousand catties. If you do it correctly, the fish will not be able to escape and we will be able to catch it!” Yu Xiaocao noticed that her two audience members were listening attentively, so she elaborated on her strategy.
At this time, over half of that large fish’s energy had been used up. Xiaocao hinted at Hou Xiaoliang that it was time to reel it in. He had a serious look on his face as he gripped the fishing pole tightly before carefully bringing it up. They could first see the fish’s head peeking through the water, followed by its body. What a specimen! From its head alone, one could tell that this fish weighed at least thirty catties. As its body left the water and it was brought up on deck, the people onboard could see that this was a large fish that was at least two meters long. It struggled heavily on the ship.
“Has this fish become aware ah?” Zhu Junyang asked in a slightly judgmental manner.
The little divine stone glared at him. Would an aware fish be so stupid to get caught by a baited fishing hook? This was merely a stupid and dumb large fish!
“Little Glutinous Dumpling, come back here now! You might get injured by that fish’s tail!” Wutong held onto its tail and brought it back into her arms, “Do you want to eat fish? You can eat after it’s cooked at noon. Don’t worry, we caught a lot today so you definitely have a share!!”
That gargantuan fish continued to struggle mightily on deck, as if it was trying to protest one last time that it didn't want to die. Its tail slapped the ship, making a ‘pah pah’ sound. From time to time, it would try to leap up and then fall heavily back down.
The ship’s coxswain heard the noise and ran over, “Wow! What a big sturgeon. It must be at least fifty catties, right? It’s not that I'm trying to brag but my wife is a good hand at cooking sturgeon. If Your Highnesses don’t disdain it, I can have my wife cook this sturgeon for you.”
Xiaocao only knew how to prepare the most commonly eaten types of fish. As for sturgeon and other rare fish, they looked to be much too high class and she didn’t want to damage such good ingredients!
They had quite a good haul today, so the fish feast for lunch was incredibly beautiful and delicious. There was fresh steamed bighead carp, sweet and sour river carp, exploding garlic fish, Sichuan poached fish in chili sauce, pine nut fish, fish ball soup…the vast majority of the dishes were made by Xiaocao and the cook maids in the ship.
As for the coxswain’s wife, she was truly a good cook who showed her experience in living on the water. The methods she used for cooking the sturgeon opened Xiaocao’s and the imperial prince’s cook maid’s eyes on new methods. With one sturgeon fish, she was able to come up with six different dishes: chopped peppers with sturgeon belly meat, spicy pickled vegetables with sturgeon fillets, spicy roasted sturgeon, light fried sturgeon fish fillets, sturgeon fish head with black bean sauce, and black pepper sturgeon steaks. Every dish was incredibly fragrant and delicious, and not a single person could stop eating after tasting them.
In the end, Xiaocao and the two men, as well as Official Wu, ate until they couldn’t bend over anymore. With their servants helping them, they strolled back and forth on the deck to help aid in digestion. There was still quite a bit of food leftover from their fish feast, so all of their subordinates benefitted from this. Hou Xiaoliang rubbed his protruding little belly and let out a burp. He sighed happily at Wutong, “In this lifetime, my greatest fortune was being able to serve Imperial Prince Xu as I’ve been able to eat so many delicious delicacies. This life was truly worth it!”
“Just look at you! Looks like this lifetime will only be used to stuff that silly face of yours!” Wutong rolled her eyes at him and stealthily popped a digestive pill into her mouth. The lavish fish banquet today was truly too delicious. She, who usually had an iron self-control, had also been unable to resist the temptation to stuff herself. That wouldn’t do! In the future, no matter how scrumptious the food looked, she needed to restrain herself. Otherwise, with such a mistress who loved coming up with new dishes, she’d become so fat that she’d be unable to walk anymore!
Hou Xiaoliang snickered and said, “Think of the commoners; don’t they spend their entire lives working in order to bring food to the mouths of their families? We now live in a good era as the common people at least have enough food to fill their stomachs. If we were still living in the past dynasty, as soon as a natural disaster came by, there’d be starving people everywhere with corpses lining the road…”
“Go go go! You say it so realistically and scarily as if you had personally experienced it!” Wutong glared at him and roundly scolded him.
Hou Xiaoliang saw that she didn’t believe him and became a bit agitated, “Believe me! I’ve heard those elders who have lived many years talk about it before. Before the end of the past dynasty, the imperial court was greedy and avaricious while the officials were corrupt. One year, the Huai River had massive flooding and commoners living at the banks of the river became homeless and destitute. The court barely just managed to scrape some relief funds together, but the local officials in the area took a greedy bite for their share and ended up absconding off with more than half of it…it was said that in some areas, there wasn’t a single living person left in a village. The people died of drowning or starvation. Vultures circled in the air above the disaster zone as they waited for the starving people to take their last breath before they swooped down to enjoy a delicious feast…”
“Ugh…can you choose a different term besides ‘delicious feast’ to describe this? You’re doing this on purpose, right? Do you still want people to be able to enjoy food in the future?”
Wutong pinched Hou Xiaoliang’s arm. He was truly a bit dumb and was nothing like his master! Imperial Prince Xu treated his princess consort incredibly well, as if she was a precious treasure that needed to be coddled and protected at all times. Didn’t they say that a certain type of master would have a certain type of servant ah? How come she couldn’t sense a whiff of similarity between these two ah?
“Alright alright, it was my bad, my bad! Wutong, have you made a decision yet? When will you consent to marry me? I’m already twenty-three years old and my family is starting to fret from impatience. If I hadn’t vehemently refused, my parents would have already made an engagement between me and some other maiden!” Hou Xiaoliang was also impatient now. Many of his childhood friends already had kids old enough to go out to the store to buy soy sauce on their own, yet he hadn’t even married a wife.
Last time, when he saw one of his good friends, he felt quite battered afterwards. Argh, other people had no problems marrying their wives. He, on the other hand, had such a difficult time!
Wutong had already become convinced after hearing Xiaocao’s thoughts on the matter. However, she couldn’t consent so easily to his proposal. Her mistress had said that the harder it was for a man to obtain something, the more he treasured it. She rebuked Hou Xiaoliang with one sentence, “Your master was twenty-five when he finally married my mistress. You still have two years to go, so why are you in such a hurry?”
“The reason why His Highness married Her Highness so late was because Her Highness wasn’t of age earlier ah! You’ve already reached the age of majority, so why do we need to wait until I turn twenty-five ah?”
“My mistress said that men who are older know how to treat their wives better. Look at His Highness; he treats the princess consort so well and listens to all of her opinions and commands!” Wutong pouted in the direction of their two masters. The epitome of a good husband, Imperial Prince Xu, was currently carefully supporting his wife as they strolled on the deck. He would even help her massage her stuffed belly from time to time.
Hou Xiaoliang immediately interjected after hearing this, “I’m not young either and I’m nothing like those rash, young youths. Whatever type of master one is will have the same type of servants. Don’t worry, after you marry me, who would I treat well besides my own wife? At that time, you will be in charge of everything at home. We can discuss outside affairs together. Whatever you say, I’ll listen!”
“Her Highness said that if a man’s words were to be believed, then even pigs would fly! Promises said before marriage will always be forgotten immediately afterwards! Her Highness has also said that all men have roving eyes. They forget about their red flag at home and go out to find multi-colored ones instead! Her Highness has also said…” Wutong began using her fingers to count out all of the ‘faults and crimes’ that men had.
Hou Xiaoliang felt his skull go numb at this——‘Your Highness, can you not make things so difficult for a man? Was your plan in telling your maidservants all of these bad things about men to keep them by your side and not marry them off ah?’ After thinking a bit, he was relieved again. Since his master was able to pass the princess consort's ‘test’, then why couldn’t he?
“Wutong, I know you still don’t completely trust me! We should use time to relieve your fears ah!! The patriarch of my family has also suffered from the tricks of concubines before, so he had set down a family law that says ‘one may only take in concubines if one is heirless at the age of forty’. Thus, you don’t need to worry about me taking in concubines or bed warmers ah! I will promise you that I will only be preoccupied with our family and I won’t go out drinking or gambling. If I break this vow, may the Heavens strike me with lightning…” Before he could finish his crazy vow, he was stopped by a little hand at his mouth. Hou Xiaoliang hurriedly took this hand into his palm and used his thumb to gently stroke the back of her hand.
Wutong’s face had turned completely red as she pulled lightly at her captured hand. She was unable to free it, so she allowed him to keep it as she scolded him bashfully, “Bah! You’re such a sly pervert and sneaky hoodlum!”
“I’m only interested in you, so I’ll play my tricks on you!” Hou Xiaoliang’s mouth seemed to be as sweet as honey. When he saw a glimmer of joy in Wutong’s shy eyes, Hou Xiaoliang’s admiration towards his master increased another few steps——following in his master’s footsteps truly was the right thing to do! Men needed to be more silver tongued. Furthermore, the other important point was to always take advantage of an opportunity to act a little roguish. After all, the worst outcome was getting slapped in the face! He had thick skin, so what was he afraid of? A virtuous woman’s weakness was a persistent man, and that ancient saying was true!
Yu Xiaocao had caught the interactions between the two out of the corner of her eye. She elbowed her husband and grumbled resentfully, “Your subordinate is trying to steal my trusted assistant away! My Wutong is such a good little cabbage but that stupid pig, Hou Xiaoliang, is taking her away from me!”
‘Uhhhh…Wife, didn’t you say that fellow Hou Xiaoliang resembled a hyper monkey ah? How did he turn into a pig today? What did it matter ah? Wife is right!’
“Mhm, mhm! That fellow does kind of resemble a pig when he’s being a pervert!” Zhu Junyang earnestly agreed with his wife’s opinion.
Su Ran snickered at the side. Zhu Junyang glanced at him briefly, silently expressing that he had nothing to say to a single dog. What was wrong with pampering, cajoling, and loving his wife?
Yu Xiaocao sighed and stated in a somewhat lost manner, “It looks like I need to train a few more talented maidservants up faster. Otherwise, once Wutong and Pipa and the others marry, I won’t have any good assistants left!”
“Don’t worry, isn’t that lass, Yingchun, quite shrewish? I’m sure she’ll be able to handle things on her own.” Zhu Junyang did his best to console his wife as she was feeling a bit downcast.
Yu Xiaocao still shook her head, “But Yingchun is around the same age as me. After two more years, I need to let her go. That’s not okay. I need to write a few letters and have Meixiang and Pipa pick out a few smart maidservants and begin training them properly.”
Zhu Junyang saw that his wife seemed a bit down so he hurriedly changed the subject matter, “In front of us is Cangzhou Prefecture. I heard that their donkey burger, mutton intestines, and cured bacon is quite good. When we go ashore, this prince will take you around and you can try some local delicacies to see if their reputation is deserved!”
Yu XIaocao’s spirits immediately perked up when delicious food was mentioned. In her past life, she had watched a well-known foodie show, ‘A Bite of China’. One of the episodes showed a donkey burger and it had left a deep impression on her. She would have never expected that she’d have the opportunity to try it herself now.
For this trip to Jiangnan, in her eyes, the official business was secondary. Seeing the beautiful sights and tasting the local delicacies was the true purpose of this trip for her!
Chopped or shredded donkey meat or offal is placed within a huǒshāo or shao bing, a roasted, semi-flaky bread pocket
