Bianjing during the Xuanhe period was the most prosperous capital city in the world at that time. The night market lasts all night long, the Fan Tower is bustling with people, and the latest dramas are being sung in the wooden stalls. Outside the east city of this city that never sleeps, the abandoned cook Meng Wantang collapsed in the snow, with only a letter of divorce and a torn recipe book in her arms.
Her father, Meng Huaiyuan, was once the head of "Weizhenlou". He was framed and imprisoned because he refused to sell his ancestral recipes to powerful people. She married into the grain merchant Zhou's family with a secret recipe. After three years of nothing, she was kicked out with a divorce letter. But in the three years in the Zhou family, she had already learned one thing - when there is no place to stand, bend down first and then raise your head.
When she was about to die, Lin Sanniang, the female shopkeeper of Fanlou, rescued her. Starting out as a handyman washing dishes in the kitchen, Meng Wantang deliberately concealed his edge and used his lost "red silk bun" to show off his sword at critical moments and rise through the ranks. Mu Qingyan, a businessman from Jianzhan, met her for the first time over a pastry. She broke his alienation by saying, "Your cup of tea is missing a taste of Jianghu fireworks." From then on, the bond between tea and food could no longer be broken.
Under the prosperity of Bianjing, there are turbulent undercurrents. Competitor "Xiankelou" Zhao Chongyi coveted the Meng family's recipes, cut off the supply of ingredients, bribed the government, and united with the old forces to launch an encirclement and suppression. Her ex-husband Zhou Yanqing offered a lot of money to get back together, but she calmly refused by saying, "When the food is cold, you can return it to the pot, but when the person is cold, he is cold." My good friend Su Nianqing was reduced to Goulan and made a living by playing the pipa. The distant aunt Han Hui, whom she had not seen for a long time, came from the south of the Yangtze River. After scolding her in the most aggressive way for not coming to join her, she turned around and went to the kitchen to stew meat.
Traveling south in late spring, I understood each other's thoughts with Mu Qingyan among the tea mountains, clouds and sea. I was robbed on my way home, and I faced him for the first time.