Literary Heroes of the Republic of China

Mu Qiong sent fried pork chops to Dr. Fu and went home early.

He came home much earlier than usual today, and the yard of Yao's house was still bustling with women washing clothes, men scolding their children, and women from families who ate dinner late were cooking.

Although the door of the house they lived in was closed, it was not bolted. When Mu Qiong opened the door, he saw candles were lit at home, and Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu were reading newspapers by candlelight.

Hearing the sound of the door opening, they raised their heads together. Not only did the two faces, one big and one small, look alike, but even their expressions were similar.

"Are you reading the newspaper?" Mu Qiong asked.

Zhu Wanwan was a little embarrassed: "Just looking around...we don't know a few words, so how can we read newspapers."

But Mu Changyu said excitedly: "Brother, I saw a lot of words I know in the newspaper!"

"Changyu is amazing!" Mu Qiong praised, "One day, you will be able to recognize all the words in the newspaper."

Mu Changyu nodded seriously.

Mu Qiong encouraged her a few more words, and then looked at Zhu Wanwan: "Mom, I haven't eaten dinner today, please warm up the leftovers for me. Also, I brought you a hamburger."

Mu Qiong took out the hamburger with a fried egg, and Mu Changyu was pleasantly surprised: "There are eggs in it!"

"Yeah." Mu Qiong smiled: "I've eaten a lot of hamburgers in the store, I brought this back for you to taste, Changyu, cut it up and share it with your mother."

Mu Changyu nodded, but she didn't cut the hamburger immediately after taking it. Her eyes fell on the white paper and notebook that Mu Qiong was holding.

She was taken aback for a moment, and then said pleasantly, "Brother, did you buy paper and a notebook?"

In fact, she had seen the paper in Mu Qiong's hand a long time ago, but she didn't think much about it at first, thinking it was a newspaper, only now did she realize that it turned out to be a few blank papers and a few notebooks.

"En." Mu Qiong nodded: "I also bought a pen." He said, and took out the pen and ink from his pocket.

"Pen!" Mu Changyu exclaimed, she couldn't remember the hamburger she was holding in her hand at the moment, and her eyes were fixed on the pen.

Zhu Wanwan thinks that they don't need to buy these. You can actually use newspapers to practice calligraphy. You can write a lot of words on the edge of the newspaper, let alone a fountain pen...

But Mu Qiong bought it, and her son didn't like to hear her talking about it... She opened her mouth, but she didn't say anything.

Seeing that the pens were rare, Mu Changyu didn't dare to touch them, and kept staring at them. Zhu Wanwan didn't do that. She went out to build a fire to boil water, and then boiled bean sprouts with pickles and tofu with green vegetables for extra meals at night. There are leftovers steamed on top.

Mu Qiong asked her and Mu Changyu to eat better, so now she cooks two dishes every day and steams some salted fish.

Of course, she was still reluctant to buy eggs and meat.

After the water in the pot boiled for a while, Mu Qiong picked up his rice bowl and started to eat, while Mu Changyu and Zhu Wanwan boiled the hot water in the pot to wash their faces, hands and feet.

They soaked their feet in a basin, and while soaking, they slowly ate burgers with clean hands.

After Zhu Wanwan was told by Mu Qiong, when Mu Qiong brought her food, she would not push back and refuse to eat it, but when she ate good food, she still felt a sense of guilt, and now she muttered: "Now every day Eating at night makes me fat."

Mu Qiong didn't speak.

Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu were not fat at all, at most they looked better.

Mu Qiong finished all the usual extra meals for the three of them at night, then touched his swollen belly, and began to teach Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu.

After he had taught them for about an hour, he let them practice on their own, and as for himself...he took out his pen to fill up the ink, and began to write the story he had in mind.

The name of the story is "Study Abroad", and Mu Qiong plans to write about [-] words for the whole story.

"Brother, what are you writing?" Mu Changyu was curious when he saw Mu Qiong's writing.

"I'm writing a novel, and I'll submit it when I finish it. If I can get the manuscript fee, our life will be easier in the future." Mu Qiong said.

"Brother, you can also write novels? That's amazing!" Mu Changyu looked at Mu Qiong with admiration.

"You will know more characters in the future, and you can also write." Mu Qiong said.

"I can't, I don't even know what to write." Mu Changyu shook his head again and again: "And... I only knew about the Ming Dynasty after listening to the novel written by Mr. Wen Da that you read. I know too little."

"Write things slowly. At the beginning, you can write about the happy or unhappy things you have encountered. After you learn more and know more, you can write about other things." Mu Qiong said with a smile.

Mu Changyu wanted to ask something, but Zhu Wanwan stopped him: "Changyu, don't disturb your brother's writing."

Mu Changyu stopped asking, and practiced the characters learned today on the white paper with Zhu Wanwan, wrote for a while, and looked at Mu Qiong with admiration.

Mu Qiong sat on an upside-down wooden barrel and wrote. After he started writing, he realized that it was difficult to write something in such a room.

The light is very dark, and it's fine that the wooden barrel chair and the door panel table make him uncomfortable, the door panel is not even...

Mu Qiong put the few notebooks he just bought under the manuscript paper so that he could write properly.

As a result... Although he has the memory of the original owner, he is not proficient in using traditional Chinese characters... He writes very slowly.

After writing for an hour, Mu Qiong only wrote seven or eight hundred words.

However, writing so slowly is also beneficial. When he stood up and loosened his muscles and bones while reading what he had written, he found that the novel he wrote this time was more concise and concise than his previous ones.

He walked around the room a few times, read the next text to Mu Changyu and Zhu Wanwan, and after explaining the meaning of a few words, he sat down and continued writing.

This time, he stopped writing after writing about five hundred words.

Time to sleep.

The next morning, Mu Qiong helped Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu review what they learned yesterday, instead of reading the newspaper, he took out a pen and paper and wrote another thousand words.

After finishing writing, he hurried to catch the tram.

The western restaurant opens at nine o'clock now. When Mu Qiong arrived at the tram stop today, a tram came and got on directly, so it was not yet nine o'clock when he arrived at the western restaurant.

At this time, Chef Xiao Wang and several helpers were busy marinating pork chops, while Boss Chen was telling the two new employees what they were going to do.

In the past two days, the business in the store has been so good that Boss Chen recruited two more people.

These days, there are few factories and many people cannot find jobs. Therefore, when Boss Chen said he wanted to recruit workers, many people came to sign up. Boss Chen finally picked two young locals with calluses on their hands.

The two were assigned to work as waiters, and another helper who came with Li Guangming who was not very good at talking was assigned to help the cook in the kitchen.

Boss Chen hurriedly finished talking to them, and the western restaurant opened.

There are still people queuing at the door this day, and some people come here to buy burgers.

Mu Qiong felt quite surprised, but also felt normal.

There are so few new things these days... Speaking of which, if you open a hot pot restaurant in the concession, the business may be better.

However, in this era, there is still a difficult problem to overcome when opening a restaurant, that is, the supply of ingredients cannot keep up.

For example, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and other ingredients that can be bought in any modern supermarket or vegetable market, at this time...you may be able to buy them, but don’t even think about supplying them every day.

Let’s just talk about Chinese cabbage, which is extremely cheap in later generations. A very famous literati wrote, “The cabbage in Beijing is transported to Zhejiang, and the roots of the cabbage are tied with red strings, hung upside down on the head of the fruit shop, and they are respected as ‘jiaocai’.” if.

Shanghai is similar to Zhejiang. Cabbage is a rare thing in Shanghai these days!

And this is why Muqiong never thought of adding vegetables to burgers.

Pork can be bought at least every day. Vegetables...the green vegetables that Shanghainese eat most in autumn and winter are gone in summer.

Mu Qiong was so busy that day that he didn't realize that Dr. Fu was here until Boss Chen called him to go to the kitchen to get a fried egg for Dr. Fu.

Because the place in the store is not big, now you can only sit down to eat if you order two cents of tonkatsu. You don’t sit down when you buy only burgers, but even so, the store is full of people.

There are also good money, after ordering the tonkatsu set meal, order another burger.

Dr. Fu could only share the table with others. When Mu Qiong passed by, a woman opposite him was staring at the child and asking him to eat more...

"Doctor Fu, your egg." Mu Qiong put the egg in front of Dr. Fu.

"Why does he have eggs and I don't?" The woman opposite Dr. Fu asked immediately.

"Ma'am, if you know the boss very well, you can also ask the boss to deliver it." Mu Qiong smiled.

When the woman heard this, she muttered a few words and stopped talking.

Only then did Mu Qiong say to Doctor Fu: "Doctor Fu, the boss gave you the eggs. I still have something to do, so I'll go get busy first!"

Mu Qiong left after speaking.

He wanted to chat with Dr. Fu, but everyone was busy, so it was hard for him to stand aside and chat with others.

Mu Qiong went to work after delivering the eggs, but he still kept an eye on Dr. Fu. When Dr. Fu left after eating, he even said hello to Dr. Fu.

In the next few days, Dr. Fu didn't come over for dinner, and because Mu Qiong had to write a novel and was busy with work, he didn't have time to ask Dr. Fu for more information on international students.

Four or five days passed like this. Mu Qiong finally wrote [-] words in his novel. When he was going to find time to ask Boss Chen for leave and submit a manuscript, the western restaurant next door also sold hamburgers.

Their hamburgers are more delicate than the hamburgers of Mu Qiong's western restaurant - sesame seeds are sprinkled on the bread.

Not only that, but their tonkatsu burgers are also cheaper than Boss Chen's western restaurant by a copper dollar.

Although some customers came to buy burgers, they recognized Mu Qiong's "authentic western restaurant", but there are also many customers who don't mind authentic or not, just want to buy cheap...

The business of western restaurants suddenly deteriorated.

Although the business of western restaurants is still very good compared to before, compared with the previous days, it can be said to have plummeted.

Boss Chen was in a bad mood again, and when he closed the shop at night, he couldn't help scolding the owner of the western restaurant next door in Cantonese, saying that he was too rude.

"Boss, the hamburger is very simple to make, and it's normal for them to learn it. Even if they didn't learn it... After everyone has tried it, they probably won't buy it again." Mu Qiong said very pertinently.

It was within his expectation that such a situation would occur.

Boss Chen cursed a few more words in Cantonese—he always used Cantonese when he cursed.

After scolding, he looked at Mu Qiong: "Xiao Mu, can you give me another idea?"

"Boss, I have come up with a new dish." Mu Qiong said.

Boss Chen's eyes lit up: "What?"