The Game of Life

Jiang Feng and Wu Minqi brought two large bowls of eight-treasure porridge to the table, where everyone was waiting to start eating, especially Jiang Zaidi, who was eyeing the braised shrimp, his eyes turning green. Jiang Feng put down the casserole without sitting down himself and began to ladle out porridge for everyone with great diligence.

“Grandpa, I really nailed the porridge today!”

“Granduncle, here, try the eight-treasure porridge I made.”

“De, my mom even said it was good after she tried it.”

“Uncle, here, this bowl’s for you. Aunt, have a bit more!”

“Fourth uncle, fourth aunt, no no no, let me do it, let me do it. Fifth uncle, here, this bowl is for you. Aunt, you love lotus seeds, so I scooped lots of them for you. Junlian, ah, oops, my mistake, Junqing, how come your hairbands are the same color today, come on, come on…”

Jiang Feng placed the last bowl of eight-treasure porridge right in front of Wu Minqi, with utmost care.

Jiang Zaidi looked at the full bowl of eight-treasure porridge in front of him, not only were his eyes gleaming green, now his face also began to turn a shade of green. He had been sequestered revising his manuscript since yesterday, having gone 29 hours without food, and oh how he longed for the juicy, aromatic braised shrimp on the table!

If only he could dip into the sauce for a taste!

Looking at the thick eight-treasure porridge in front of him, rich with ingredients; many of which had almost melted into the black rice, the sweet fragrance infused with the scent of osmanthus sugar made it look rather delicious. But…

Jiang Zaidi sighed internally. As good as the porridge might be, it lacked meat!

After famishing for 29 hours, every gram of fat in his body was clamoring for meat, but he couldn’t refuse the porridge, his little brother’s token of affection. Grandpa had not cooked and called the entire family over for a long time. It had been nearly ten days since their last gathering like this, and it was thoughtful of his younger brother to come up with having a meal like this to get Grandpa cooking.

Jiang Zaidi stirred the porridge in front of him and slurped a big spoonful.

Hey, is it true that everything tastes better when you haven’t eaten for a long time?

Jiang Zaidi actually found the bowl of porridge in front of him extremely delicious at that moment: sweet and smooth, and even without any side dishes or his favorite crispy pork fat, it was irresistible.

“Slurp, slurp, slurp…”

Suddenly, the sound of everyone hungrily enjoying their porridge filled the dining table.

Jiang Junlian picked up a stuffed tofu pocket, reveling in a bite of tofu pocket followed by a spoonful of porridge. Inspired, Jiang Zaidi followed suit, alternating bites of braised shrimp, crisp-fried meat, pork knuckle, and shreds of pork cooked with hot pepper with sips of porridge.

Exquisite! For the first time in his life, Jiang Zaidi found his mom’s recent obsession with health food made sense, finding joy in eating porridge! The sweetness, the smooth texture, the slightly hot porridge warming up his stomach—it was entrancing.

It wasn’t that Jiang Zaidi disliked porridge; it was just that the pork, chicken, beef, or mixed-meat porridge his dad used to make was terrible!

Jiang Zaidi looked at Jiang Feng, his eyes moist.

Grandpa was right; of all the brothers, the youngest truly had the most promise. As long as little brother maintained the level of this pot of porridge when competing in “Good Taste Chef King Contest,” Jiang Zaidi wouldn’t have to worry about going hungry in the future!

He had already planned it out: buy a house right next to his little brother’s, pop over every now and then for breakfast, catch a lunch, snag a dinner, someday bring a girlfriend along, and when kids come into the picture, bring them too. Whether it’s decorating a new house, planning a wedding, registering household and school placement, tutoring, high school choices, college entrance exam applications, he, the big cousin, could take care of it all, ensuring his brother wouldn’t be disturbed by mundane affairs and could focus on honing his culinary skills.

Jiang Feng, silently gnawing on salt and pepper ribs, felt a chill run down his spine.

De, why are you looking at me like that?

“Hey, little bro, why aren’t you eating the tofu pockets? Don’t you like them? Let me eat them for you,” Jiang Junlian offered, not with the best intentions.

Jiang Feng quickly snatched away the last tofu pocket from the plate with his chopsticks: “No trouble at all, I’ll endure the hardship and eat it myself.”

When he looked towards Jiang Zaidi again, he had already buried his head in his third bowl, slurping down the porridge.

The dinner ended with everyone full and happy, every last bit of porridge and dishes on the table had been devoured. Wu Minqi left first as she had been staying in a rented apartment near UAL University with her mother these past few days. According to the gossip master Ji Yue, Wu Minqi’s dormitory relations were pretty sour—an epitome of the hellish women’s dorm with mini-cliques within a four-person room and five chat groups for one dorm, and Wu Minqi had recently asked Ji Yue about any long-term apartments for rent near the school.

Ji Yue and Wang Xiulian went down to clean the first floor, and Jiang Feng’s grandaunts, Aunt 4 and Aunt 5, also went down to help when they saw this. The men and the younger generation stayed on the second floor to brag.

Leading the Jiang Family realm of idle boasting, Jiang Jianguo was the first to start the conversation, “This spring everyone wants new clothes, and my tailor shop is so busy it’s unbelievable, busy every day.”

“Being too busy is good, isn’t it? You can earn more money for Zaide to buy a house in Beiping in the future. Once Third Brother’s shop opens up, we all have to go to Beiping,” Jiang Jianshe said.

“It’d be best to buy next to Taifeng Building. Hey, Feng, in which area is Taifeng Building located again?” Jiang Jianye asked.

“Second Ring.”

“Might as well buy a courtyard house; our big family can live together,” Jiang Jiankang also joined in the boasting.

“One might not be enough; buy two,” Jiang Jianguo boasted more skillfully.

“Zaide and Feng will have to get married in the future. We’ve to buy the courtyard houses, and also the wedding homes,” Jiang Jianshe remarked, since bragging didn’t cost a thing.

While the four brothers were boasting, Jiang Junlian and Jiang Junqing, the two sisters, went to bother Jiang Zaidi, who was yawning after having had his fill and just wanting to sleep.

Jiang Junlian was the most egregious, grabbing Jiang Zaidi’s hand and pleading, “De, please find us another tutor. The current one isn’t handsome at all; we have no motivation to study.”

Jiang Zaidi was drowsy and listlessly replied, “What kind do you want?”

“Taller than 1.8 meters, with a nice voice, good-looking, good-tempered, and gentle,” Jiang Junlian couldn’t wait to reply.

Jiang Feng: ???

Are you looking for a teacher or a husband?

Jiang Zaidi yawned again: “There’s no such teacher in this world.”

“De, you’re lying—there must be; you just haven’t searched with your heart!” the two teenage girls chorused.

Jiang Weiming watched everyone with a chuckle, enjoying seeing these youngsters chat and laugh, as he himself was one of the main characters in a family ethical drama. Jiang Weiguo, however, was different; he was serious all day, as if deep in thought.

And he indeed was deep in thought.

With the predecessors like Jiang Weiming, Sun Guanyun, and Sir Tan, he now watched each grandchild, pondering whether they had the potential to be unworthy descendants. Sun Guanyun had only two sons and already there was such drama. He had five sons; if they ever started feuding in the future, whether it was one against four or two against three, the scene wouldn’t be pretty.

“Jiang Junqing, Jiang Junlian!” Jiang Weiguo suddenly spoke up.

Jiang Junlian and Jiang Junqing, with their not-so-delicate figures, startled and tried to hide themselves to no avail. They could only reveal their most deceivingly sweet, innocent, and cute smiles and said sweetly in unison, “Grandpa, what is it?”

“After your middle school exams are over, come to my place to practice cooking,” Jiang Weiguo said.

The two sisters suddenly panicked.

“Grandpa, we need to study!” they protested.

“Yes, yes, the high school curriculum is very intense; we need to pre-study.” “Study what? I’m well aware of your lousy grades, far worse than your four cousins. It’s because you didn’t learn to cook when you were younger. Don’t give me excuses. Jianshe, send both of them to me during the summer vacation,” Jiang Weiguo had been mulling over it for two days, deciding that the reason for potentially unworthy descendants was because they hadn’t been taught to cook when young.

Without suffering and tempering their will, without learning to cherish, they were bound to grow up crooked.

Jiang Weiguo felt that his two granddaughters had the most potential to become unworthy descendants in the entire Jiang family.

“Dad,” the two sisters looked pleadingly at Jiang Jianshe.

“Learning to cook with Grandpa is great. It’s precisely because we studied culinary arts that our academic results were so good,” Jiang Zaide delivered the final blow.

Back in the day, in order to avoid being dragged back to the countryside to learn cooking, which one of them didn’t study desperately hard?

Jiang Zaide was in the top ten citywide in the college entrance exam, Jiang Shoucheng was the city’s top scholar, Jiang Ran was in the top twenty, and Jiang Feng was in the top thirty. Their achievements, all thanks to Grandpa’s good education!

Jiang Feng was pleased to see his two female cousins finally setting foot on the same path their brothers had taken.

After the boasting session ended, everyone dispersed, and Jiang Feng cleaned up the kitchen before heading back to his dorm. Wang Hao had no idea what a great meal he had missed, as he was happily chatting with his goddess on the phone, and it seemed like his date that evening had gone very smoothly.

Jiang Feng took a shower to wash off the scent of the eight-treasure porridge from his body and went to bed, syncing his routine with that of the elderly at his young age. Wang Hao also went to bed with his phone, and only the white light at the head of his bed shone in the darkness, reflecting the silly smile on his face.

Jiang Feng fell asleep peacefully, but Good Taste’s staff couldn’t. At eleven at night, the project manager personally called and scolded his direct subordinates bloody. The moment the subordinates were scolded, they, in turn, called to scold their own subordinates, and the scolding cascaded down to the customer service girl who had taken Jiang Feng’s call.

The poor customer service girl, who only got off work at ten and went to bed at midnight after her skincare routine, was abruptly awakened at 1:26 am by her boss’s call. She set the phone to speaker and let it lie on the bed while her boss ranted into thin air. Meanwhile, she sat at her vanity, watching for any new fine lines that might have appeared at the corners of her eyes because of the call.

After ten minutes of yelling into the void with no response—a punch hitting cotton, making the boss even angrier—he shouted over the phone, “Qiu Bing, do you realize how serious the problem you caused this time is!”

“Boss, the request for osmanthus sugar was made by contestant Jiang Feng himself. I was just honestly reporting it. Contestant Jiang Feng is someone Mr. Han circled and named to be given special attention, so of course I dared not fail to report his request!” Qiu Bing reapplied her eye cream.

“What osmanthus sugar?” the boss was confused.

“It’s not osmanthus sugar?” Qiu Bing was also confused.

“Have you been listening to me at all? I’m talking about you damaging the machine today. Why are you bringing up osmanthus sugar? I’m telling you, that machine contained important data, the project manager is already personally looking into this matter, and Director Sang just called me. The nature of this incident is very serious, don’t give me…”

“Wait, hold on, boss, I was randomly selected to go be a customer service rep at the culinary competition today; it wasn’t my shift!”

“Not your shift? Then who was on duty today?”

“Chen Qi!”

“Cough, you should get some rest,” the boss quickly hung up.

Qiu Bing:…

Stricken with unjust accusation, Qiu Bing couldn’t get back to sleep, and even felt a bit of schadenfreude looking forward to watching Chen Qi’s drama unfold the next morning. Unable to sleep, she sat in bed scrolling through her WeChat moments and hadn’t swiped through two pages before she stumbled upon her trendy grandpa insisting on being a microbusiness in the moments even after eleven at night.

“Home-made osmanthus sugar, traditional craftsmanship, quality guaranteed, pure color, green and pollution-free, 89 yuan a jar, friends who have bought it all say it’s good!!! [Thumbs Up][Thumbs Up][Thumbs Up]”

Below that was a picture, probably taken a month ago, of a bald, muscular man in a thin cotton jacket holding two jars of osmanthus sugar.

As a lousy graduate who spent four years at Finance and Economics University, Qiu Bing recognized at a glance that the picture was taken on the pedestrian street next to Finance and Economics University.

Her grandpa even went to set up a stall at Finance and Economics University?!

As she hesitated over whether or not to like the post, Qiu Bing suddenly remembered the osmanthus sugar that Jiang Feng requested.

February 27th.

The pedestrian street next to the east gate of Finance and Economics University.

An old grandpa setting up a stall.

Could it be… such a coincidence…

Qiu Bing liked her grandpa’s WeChat post and decided to report this matter the next day.

What if it really is for a 1000-yuan prize!

Last time, Little Zhang from the maintenance department brought in three free-range chickens all the way from his hometown, and the company rewarded him with a full 3000 yuan!

Qiu Bing, feeling thrilled at the prospect of the windfall 1000 yuan coming her way, pondered whether she should use it to pay off her Huabei or buy a bottle of eye cream, then lay down to sleep again.

In the following days, Jiang Feng tirelessly made eight-treasure porridge every day, experimenting with various types of sugar: white sugar, brown sugar, black sugar, maple sugar, rock sugar, maltose, and osmanthus sugar were all thoroughly tested. The kitchen of Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant had turned into a mini candy factory, churning out eight-treasure porridges that were sometimes failures, sometimes normal, with flavors ranging from ordinary to weird or even weirder. Jiang Jiankang was bitter from all the tasting, Wang Xiulian kept her distance, and Ji Yue questioned her life choices.

Even the eight-treasure porridge, which used to cost three yuan per bowl, was now being given away for free. This familiar yet strange and frightening flavor reminded the customers of Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant of the fear once dominated by mushroom soup.

Still, by 9 pm on April 10th, Jiang Feng had not found a better sugar.

Actually, there was a maple sugar that wasn’t bad, quite a bit better than the others, but it was the kind that Jiang Jiandang had given to Jiang Jiankang last year, and it came in an unbranded jar. Jiang Feng had called Jiang Jiandang, but he couldn’t remember where he had bought that maple sugar, so Jiang Feng had to give up.

The contest was tomorrow, and Jiang Feng returned to the dormitory at 9 pm only to be surprised to find Wang Hao watching “Good Taste Chef King Contest”—the live broadcast of the Good Taste food competition that had been turned into a variety show. The name was quite dumb, but the viewership was incredibly high, breaking 10 million on the first day, and now it had over 30 million views.

Jiang Feng believed these numbers were genuine, because Ji Yue herself watched it multiple times a day, only for the segments featuring Zhang Guanghang.

Schoolgirls in love with faces and some exhausted fangirls like Ji Yue treated the show like a culinary version of Produce 101, madly voting and chanting support for Zhang Guanghang. According to Ji Yue, the fan clubs had even been established. Currently, Zhang Guanghang was in the lead with 110,000 votes, followed by Wu Minqi with 60,000 votes, and Jiang Feng in third place with 10,000 votes, which he suspected were inflated.

Even thinking about it brought tears.

Jiang Feng hadn’t watched “Good Taste Chef King Contest” yet, planning to save it to watch while waiting backstage tomorrow. But since Wang Hao was watching it, he curiously took a peek.

The screen was flooded with comments—

“Zhang Guanghang is so handsome!”

“Guanghang, I want to have your babies!!”

“My Guanghang is number one, no one can argue with that!”

“I’m going to worship Guanghang’s incredible beauty-”

Jiang Feng:…

What is this, Idol Chef Birth?

“Feng, you’re going to be famous; we’re all using your memes to communicate in the class group,” Wang Hao turned and said to Jiang Feng, “It’s in the class group chat, have you seen it?”

When Jiang Feng opened the class group chat, he saw a screenshot of himself lying on the ground with the caption “I am fragile and cannot take care of myself.”

Such a rough meme, Jiang Feng could guess who made it using his toes.

Jiang Feng silently opened the drawer.

The rolling pin was gone.

Wang Hao wore a triumphant smile on his face.

Jiang Feng silently picked up a water cup.

“You cur, get ready for the cup!”