The Imperial Chef in the 1990S [From Ancient Times to the Present]

[Daily updates at midnight. My next book, The Famine Year, When My Group-Buy Chat Went Wild, is coming soon. Please add it to your reading list!] Palace cook Mi Wan had such extraordinary culinary skills that, at just twenty-five, she won the favor of the palace's most powerful figures and rose to become the head chef of the Imperial Kitchen. But a tree that towers above the forest is bound to be battered by the wind. After being framed and persecuted, she opened her eyes in a new China in the 1990s, having transmigrated there. Her new self was being forced by her parents to marry, so they could use her bride price to find a wife for her younger brother. Mi Wan would never agree. Even in ancient times, parents this vile were hard to come by. She promptly cut ties with her family and moved to town, setting up a wonton stall at the market. The moment she dropped the flour dumplings into the boiling water, their fragrance wafted through the market, making everyone crave a taste. Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, pork belly cooked in a clay pot, the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast, fried glutinous rice rolls... She'll carry on China's culinary traditions, starting with a bowl of wontons! - One day, a down-and-out, cold, hard man came to her wonton stall. He was handsome, but there was a knife scar by his eyebrow, and his aura was so dark and menacing that he scared away quite a few customers. Mi Wan handed him a bowl of wontons, hoping to send him on his way. But that bowl of wontons became a ray of moonlight shining into the man's dark heart. Later, he appeared in a military uniform, a man of considerable influence. He told her he wanted to marry her. - From the day Kong Tianqiao entered the Imperial Kitchen, Mi Wan had been the towering mountain looming over her, leaving her unable to breathe. She had gone to great lengths to scheme against Mi Wan, never expecting to transmigrate alongside her to the flourishing new era of the 1990s. Fortunately, when Kong Tianqiao transmigrated, she was already married to a powerful man in the military. She smugly watched Mi Wan running her little wonton stall and thought, I don't have to compete with you in cooking this time around. I've already got the life of a pampered lady. But Mi Wan's wonton stall kept growing until it became a five-star chain of Chinese restaurants, and world-class chefs fought to become her students. Mi Wan worked her way up to become a woman of standing, married an even more powerful man, and lived a happy, loving life, with both fame and fortune. Kong Tianqiao watched as her husband continued to go downhill, her children proved useless, and her own cooking skills went to waste. ...It was as if she'd transmigrated into a living hell. My next book, The Famine Year, When My Group-Buy Chat Went Wild. Please add it to your reading list! Blurb: She transmigrates to the 1960s and wakes up in a living hell from the start. Her family hasn't seen a grain of rice in three days. Her grandfather is lying on the kang, starving and waiting to die. Her mother has tightened her waistband three more notches, and her youngest sister is so hungry at night that she bites her fingers until they're bloody. The villagers have started digging up wild roots and boiling tree bark. The production team's ox starved to death, and someone nearly died on the day they divided up the beef. Su Kui thinks she's going to die in this famine. Then she hears a voice: [Dawn Gardens Residents' Group 3: Someone mentioned you] [Sister Liu, Building 23: Group leader, I got the ribs from yesterday. Even my dog won't eat them, they're so tough!] [Wang, Unit 15: The cherries from our group order arrived. They're only 3J size, way too small. Anyone want them?] Su Kui looks out at the famine-stricken world, then at the piles of so-called "junk food" in the chat, and falls silent for three seconds. Everyone thinks that Su Kui's whole family, old and young, won't make it through the winter. Until one night, Er Gouzi, who lives next door and is too hungry to sleep, peeks through a crack in the wall... On the stove in Su Kui's house sits a basin of fluffy white rice. Beside it is a bowl of pork belly braised with preserved mustard greens, glistening with oil. The little girl who could barely walk yesterday from hunger is holding a sponge cake, licking the cream off it one tiny taste at a time. Er Gouzi goes completely mad on the spot. Later, the story spreads throughout the surrounding villages: The eldest Su girl has a ghost. Every night, a pile of things appears out of nowhere at her door, packed in strange bags with colorful labels, their aroma enough to ensnare your very soul. Until the cold-faced regiment commander, recently retired from the battlefield, blocks her way. "Comrade," he says in a low voice, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Those things in your... bags. Can I trade for some?" Su Kui looks down at the plastic bag from Xixi Grocery she's just received. "...What do you want? I've got potatoes and eggs, and today's special is cola chicken wings." #I'm ordering takeout in the 1960s #The whole production team is starving, but my family celebrates a feast every day Theme: Women must always learn to stand on their own two feet.