Can You Wait Until I’m Sick of Eating Before You Go Bankrupt?

After changing jobs, Chen Li moved into a new home in Jiangcheng, outside the city center in the area beyond the Fifth Ring Road. The whole district had a uniquely retirement-home feel. It was clean but crowded, with electric scooters and illegally parked cars filling the streets. Every morning at five on the dot, elderly residents rummaged through the trash bins downstairs, banging the lids so loudly that anyone with nervous exhaustion had no chance of sleeping. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that right in front of her neighborhood was a two-hundred-meter breakfast street, with baozi, youtiao, and tofu pudding, along with beef noodles, hot dry noodles, and Chongqing noodles. Behind her was an entire street of little eateries: barbecue, hotpot, seafood stalls, braised snacks, desserts, and snack vendors, so she could eat something different at every meal. After living in these “harsh” conditions for half a year, Chen Li had successfully developed what she called “Schrodinger’s picky eating”: the list of foods she could eat kept getting shorter. Then, to make matters worse, her beloved restaurants began closing one after another. The malatang shop she’d eaten at for a whole month shut its doors without a word. The Chongqing hotpot restaurant she’d loved so much became an internet-famous place overnight, started livestreaming, and changed its flavors completely. Her favorite snakehead fish rice noodle shop closed so the owners could help their child prepare for the college entrance exams. Even the owner of the private barbecue shop she’d joined a WeChat group for announced that it would close at the end of next month for a break, with no reopening date set. Her menu was shrinking. Chen Li didn’t understand why. All she knew was that her world was falling apart. After the malatang shop, the hotpot restaurant, the fish noodles, and all the rest, she couldn’t bear to lose one more favorite barbecue place! So she bravely made her move. Later, the barbecue shop owner kept pestering her: Which matters more to you, me or the malatang/hotpot/fish noodles? Chen Li: “...” If Heaven insisted she choose between going hungry and putting up with a foul-mouthed boyfriend She’d still pick the latter. At least he’d feed her. A hard-working foodie who lives to eat × a barbecue shop owner who only wants a vacation but gets haunted by a starving ghost I dedicate this story to all the delicious restaurants around me that have closed _(:_」∠)_ Theme: Eat well, drink well, and stay healthy