During the Yuanyou period of the Northern Song Dynasty, three generations of the Shen family guarded a small restaurant in an old alley in the Jiangnan Water Town.
My grandfather has been sharpening kitchen knives for fifty years, my father has been cooking soup on the stove for half a lifetime, and my mother uses an abacus to calculate credit and favors clearly. Two and a half-year-old teenagers, one is calm and precocious, secretly pressing the new menu he wrote under his pillow; the other is naughty and playful, serving bowls of soup but can coax the guests from getting angry with sweet words. There is also a newborn sister, who is held in the hands of the whole family, like a small moon.
The restaurant is not big, and they only sell plain noodles, wontons, and soy sauce meat for a few pennies. But these bowls of hot soup and hot rice contain the livelihood of the neighbors - the coolies who carry the work on the dock, the old man who sells tofu, the money man who makes a living as a storyteller, the coachman who has three months of credit... Everyone found a moment of peace in this restaurant.
There is the old soup gurgling on the stove, the pot of old stew in the backyard that has been raised for generations, and the lanterns in front of the door that endure despite the weather. The Shen family maintains this restaurant in the simplest way - not seeking to be rich and powerful, but just hoping that the lights will always be on and the smoke will never stop.
This is a story about food, family and the warmth of time. The so-called small fortune means peace, but there is a lamp on when it gets dark, and a bowl of noodles is always hot in the soup pot.
