A Nation of Foodies, Take Note

Three Realms Little Restaurant is now open

[Preorder: I Opened a Culinary School in Ancient Times. Please add it to your reading list. / Check out my friend's novel: Raising a Baby as a Cannon Fodder / Xiao Qiao and the Mid Lane]

#Food solves everything, including palace intrigue#

#I became everyone's favorite thanks to my cooking#

Foodie Xu Nian transmigrates into the Ninth Princess of the Great Song. Her father doesn't care for her, her mother doesn't love her, and her siblings act as if she doesn't exist. She lives in a remote little palace.

No one caring for her is no problem. She plants a vegetable garden, grows produce, cooks, earns a little money, lies flat like a lazy fish, and enjoys a carefree life.

All she hopes for is to leave the palace and establish her own household at fifteen.

The Great Song palace is also home to Lin Jing, a noble young lord of the highest rank. His aunt is the empress, and his status rivals that of a prince.

Servant: Young Lord, I have a new delicacy called an egg tart. Would you like to try one?

Lin Jing doesn't even look at it. He waves dismissively: Take it away! I don't want any!

A few days later.

The notorious Lin Jing, young lord who is arrogant and domineering, and looks down on everyone, gazes up with innocent, wide eyes and asks sweetly, "Ninth Princess, could I have an egg tart?"

Xu Nian: Just pay for it.

After that, the remote palace becomes the most popular place in the Great Song palace, and the Ninth Princess, whom nobody had ever noticed, becomes the most popular person there.

The refined and elegant Second Prince: "Ninth Sister, here's a newly published storybook. How about sweet-and-sour fish today?"

The outspoken Third Princess: "Ninth Sister, this jade hair ornament set is for you. I'd like another bowl of river-snail rice noodles."

The mature and steady Crown Prince: "Ninth Sister, yesterday's spicy chicken wings were excellent. Take this newly presented coral branch."

Xu Nian: These are nice, but remember to pay for your meals.

Everyone: ...

Fake-calm, real-tsundere young Lord Lin: "These are newly acquired vegetable seeds. Keep them safe. This is the only plant of its kind in all the Great Song."

Xu Nian happily takes them and generously waives the young lord's meal bill.

Hmph! None of you are taking her away from me!

[Reader's Guide]

1. This is a completely fictional setting, the kind that falls apart at the slightest poke. Readers looking for historical accuracy, beware.

2. A food-focused slice-of-life story, with little in the way of palace intrigue or political scheming.

3. For detailed content warnings, see the author's note in Chapter 1. One more thing: please don't insist that certain ingredients didn't exist in ancient times. This is a transmigration food story set in a fictional world, so real history doesn't apply. Some ingredients can also be made from raw materials, and may go by different names today. That doesn't mean they couldn't be made.

4. This is a long practice project. Please be understanding if my writing falls short in places. It won't be very long.

5. Updated daily at 23:59.

Synopsis saved on May 26, 2020.

[Preorder: I Opened a Culinary School in Ancient Times. Click my profile to add it to your reading list.]

#My teacher is hopeless in the kitchen, but every one of my students is a culinary genius#

The streets of Shengjing are covered in flyers today, all printed with the following slogans:

#Learn to cook at Xifeng, and never go hungry again#

#Want to know where to learn cooking? Head east in Shengjing and find Xifeng#

#Learn cooking at Xifeng, and never worry about being broke#

Everyone is curious, whether they can read or not: What on earth is Xifeng?

Everyone: It's just a scam. Don't fall for it!

Later, the elderly and women and children with nowhere else to turn, homeless refugees and beggars, and the courtesan Yu Niang, who had been cheated and left with nowhere to go, all head to the eastern part of the city and enter Xifeng, just to give it a try.

When they come out...

The elderly, women, and children set up shop on the snack street;

The refugees and beggars become owners of an all-you-can-eat hotpot and barbecue restaurant;

Yu Niang the courtesan becomes the most beautiful owner of a snack shop;

Before long, Shengjing has everything from jianbing guozi, liangpi, mipi, and rice noodles to stinky tofu, river-snail rice noodles, hotpot, barbecue, and fried chicken cutlets, as well as crispy shrimp, braised ribs, and crispy roast duck. Whatever you want to eat, it's there.

Passersby: Delicious!

They all rush in to eat, then come out and sprint in one direction: Xifeng in the eastern part of the city!

As they run, they shout, "Please, Master, take me as your student!"

[Preorder: The First Bookshop of Ancient Times. Click my profile to add it to your reading list.]

After graduating from university, Wen Zhizhuo entered a thankless sunset industry: print publishing. Through her own hard work and talent, she produced several wildly successful books that each sold tens of millions of copies, becoming a celebrated top editor in the field.

She wakes up in the Great Yin Dynasty, transmigrated into the plain-looking, ignorant, and useless Third Princess. Her fiance is Jun Ruyu, the son of the Minister of Revenue, a man everyone envies her for marrying. True to his name, he is as graceful as jade and bamboo, and wants to break off their engagement.

She doesn't care what her fiance does. But books are pitifully scarce here: the Four Books and Five Classics, repeated over and over, and nothing else. Yet there are a hundred times more people who love and long for books than there were in her previous life.

She panics at once and slaps her thigh. How can this be? How can people have nothing to read?

She returns to her old profession, determined to give everyone who wants to read a book something to read.

A few months later, bookshops have opened all across the capital.

Young ladies in their chambers clutch freshly printed travelogues of Tengzhou, unable to put them down, and tell everyone they meet, "The wisest woman in all of Great Yin is none other than the Third Princess."

The top scorer in the imperial examination hauls home a cartload of practice questions and past exam solutions, declaring, "I owe my success in today's examination to the Third Princess."

A wealthy family's child has servants watch day and night for newly published picture books, sighing each day, "The Third Princess is such an interesting person. I only wish these picture books came out faster."

Everyone: "???" What happened to her being a useless fool?

Find my completed novels on my profile:

I Ascended to Immortality by Raising Pigs

A Guide to Getting Rich Through Ancient Cuisine

I Picked Up a Little Tyrannosaurus

Premise: Love and food are the only things in life that must never be let down.