Shanghai, 1993. Neon lights flicker on in the depths of the longtang alleyways. Li Hao, a forty-year-old chef who has made nothing of his life, dies in a car accident. When he wakes up, he has returned to the summer he was eighteen: the summer he failed the college entrance exam, had no money, and was seen by his whole family as a good-for-nothing.
This time, he has only two hundred yuan, sewn by his mother into the hem of his clothes, but his mind holds three decades’ worth of culinary expertise and business savvy. He sets up a wok at the entrance to an old lane near Jing’an Temple. His plate of fried rice with scallions and dried shrimp takes the whole city by storm. From street stall to small shop, from small shop to chain, from chain to a restaurant empire.
But fate has more in store for him than the kitchen. The old stall owner’s harassment, his first love’s return, mysterious diners who appear late at night, an annual cooking contest for newcomers, the secret of an ancestral broth, and a sweeping crisis of trust… With every bowl of fried rice, Li Hao captures the many flavors of life and cooks up an era of his own.
This is a story about food, dignity, and reconciliation. Amid the flying spatulas, an ordinary man spends twenty years rewriting his fate.
This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is coincidental. Do not imitate.
