The day her in-laws took everything from her and threw her out, Jiang Xue walked away with nothing but a single braising pot. Nobody knew she had a two-square-meter freshness-preserving space. Food put inside came out tasting exactly the same, and one pot of old braising broth left overnight was as good as ten days' worth. The crowds leaving the cinema and the bicycle bells of textile-factory workers finishing the night shift became her first customers. From a night-market stall to a household worth ten thousand yuan, from taking over a state-run restaurant to opening a chain across the provincial capital, she kept track of every jin and turned her life around one pot at a time. Her ex-husband's family confiscated her ration booklet and blocked her access to spices, waiting for her to starve. She was determined to put every last one of them back in their place. In the spring of 1984, she was claiming half of Qingshi Street for herself.
