The Village Cook [1980s]

Lin Baoxiang has a golden tongue. There are few flavors she cannot recreate.

Her old-fashioned grandfather refuses to pass his culinary skills on to her, always complaining that it should have been her brothers who were born with that tongue.

The slow, gentle winds of reform and opening-up finally reach this little mountain village. Her older brothers toss aside their spatulas and head to the city for work, while her younger brothers refuse to spend their days in a kitchen full of cooking smoke.

Only Lin Baoxiang manages to persuade her grandfather to pass down the skills of Fujian cuisine to her.

-

Chen Jiaming comes from a family with a Cantonese culinary tradition. His maternal grandfather once worked as a head chef at a grand restaurant in the provincial capital.

From childhood, he trained through the bitter cold of winter and the scorching heat of summer, following his grandfather through streets and towns.

The customers in this part of the country had always been his, until Lin Baoxiang appeared.

-

Lin Baoxiang and Chen Jiaming never imagined they would end up together when they were sniping at each other and vying for each other's customers.

-

Three meals a day, through all four seasons, for every celebration and every farewell.

-

This is a food novel.

This is a business novel.

A love story between two lonely little spatulas.

Theme: Eat well, live well