Chapter 143: Chicken Stewed with Mushrooms

"Whose is this?" she wondered curiously as she tore open the envelope, only to find a smaller envelope inside bearing five handwritten words: "Please pass to Li Juan. Thank you."

Oh! How polite! Without even thinking, it had to be Li Juan's boyfriend, Wang Qingwei! Her knowledge of this classmate Wang was limited to Li Juan's descriptions: one meter eighty tall, fond of chestnut-dyed hair, the pillar of the basketball team, and the champion of skipping classes. She truly admired herself for remembering such details so clearly. She recalled once seeing a photograph of him; he seemed to have a round face and a very sunny disposition. Wondering if the photo was inside, she lifted the envelope, held it up to the sunlight for a long time, and finally concluded it wasn't there. She slipped the small envelope back into the large one, intending to hand it over whenever Li Juan came by.

"Yanyan, your youngest uncle is here!" Her dad pushed the door open and called out to her.

"Got it!" Dong Yanyan quickly tucked the items into her book box, locked it, smoothed her hair a few times in front of the mirror, and hurried over to the west room. Her youngest uncle, naturally, was her youngest paternal uncle, not even thirty years old yet. Because he married early, his little daughter was the exact same age as Nannan.

Her uncle was sitting on the edge of the brick kang, holding her little cousin and chatting animatedly with her parents. Seeing her walk in, he laughed heartily and said, "Yanyan, how come you haven't been over to my place to play these past couple of days? Since it's your birthday today, your grandma boiled a basin of eggs for you and asked me to bring them over."

Looking at the large porcelain basin filled with eggs, Dong Yanyan couldn't help smiling and said, "So many! I won't even finish eating these by the New Year."

"Eat the plain ones first," her uncle chuckled. "Your grandma marked the salted ones, so take your time with those."

Dong Yanyan's absolute favorite food was her grandmother's pickled salted eggs. The egg whites were tender and delicate, the yolks golden and rich, oozing oil with every bite yet never greasy—they were the ultimate accompaniment to any meal.

"I want to eat the salted ones! You guys can have the plain ones!" Dong Yanyan ran to the kitchen to fetch two small basins and carefully sorted out the eggs. The salted eggs were all marked with small black charcoal dots, leaving the rest as plain.

"Uncle, you and the others should stay for lunch today. Dad killed a small chicken, and we're having stewed chicken with mushrooms. Go call my aunt over too," she said happily.

"Will do, Yanyan! In a bit, go call your eldest uncle and eldest aunt over as well, along with your eldest brother, eldest sister, and second sister," her mom said with a smile.

"Got it. So basically, the whole family is coming over! Leaving my grandpa and grandma to eat all by themselves at home," Dong Yanyan joked playfully.

"Your grandpa and grandma have trouble walking. Once the dishes are done, you can take some over to them," her dad said with a smile.

The greatest advantage of living in the countryside was enjoying mountain delicacies for free. Come autumn, the mountains teemed with mushrooms, hazelnuts, pine nuts, walnuts, and all sorts of wild greens. The happiest task for rural women during the agricultural lull was to gather wild vegetables and sell them at the town's collection points. Back in the nineties, these mountain greens were exported; a single catty of fiddlehead ferns could fetch three to five yuan, while hazelnuts and pine nuts commanded even higher prices. As for mushrooms, a new batch would sprout after every rainfall. Any surplus fresh mushrooms would be carefully selected, laid out flat on round wicker drying mats to sun-dry outdoors, and by winter, they would be used in stews with mushrooms or vermicelli. The flavor was simply divine. Later on, none of the mushrooms Dong Yanyan ate in the city could compare to those foraged from the mountains; that unique, wild fragrance belonged exclusively to mushrooms growing in an unspoiled, pristine forest.

Her dad placed the cleaned small chicken on the cutting board, chopped it into pieces, tossed it into the wok with scallions, ginger, and garlic. Country folk were generous with their portions; a single farm-raised chicken filled half the wok. Dong Yanyan neatly stacked split firewood inside the stove's hearth: to make proper stewed dishes, one had to use the heat from split logs. Cooking with straw or cornstalks produced an inferior flavor profile.

Within a short while, the kitchen was filled with billowing steam. The rich aroma of the farm chicken slowly drifted out, teasing the tip of her nose with delicate wisps that gradually intensified until the entire room was saturated with fragrance.

Her dad and uncle were busy stuffing meat sausages. The sausage casings were made from pig intestines, while the filling was a minced mixture of lean meat and flour, giving off an intoxicating aroma when boiled.

"Dad! Save some fatty intestines for me; I'll make a stir-fried spicy intestine dish later," Dong Yanyan called out to her dad.

"Can Yanyan cook now? I thought you were only good at eating," her uncle teased with a smile.

"Knowing only how to eat without knowing how to cook doesn't make someone a true foodie in the strict sense. By the way, Uncle, does your house have any Korean kimchi? Bring me some, won't you?" Dong Yanyan requested with a smile. Korean kimchi usually referred to spicy fermented cabbage. In this village where Han and Korean ethnic groups lived side by side, the pickled cabbage made by elderly Korean women was peerlessly delicious—crisp, tender, and intensely flavorful. After getting married, she rarely returned home and never learned how to make it herself. The ones bought from supermarkets fell terribly short of her hometown flavor. Besides, by that time, the elderly Korean women in the village who knew how to make kimchi had mostly stopped doing so. Even if they made it, few people ate it; many of their sons, daughters-in-law, daughters, sons-in-law, grandchildren, and granddaughters were away working odd jobs in distant places, leaving their toddlers in the grandmothers' care. Occasionally, when returning home, she would see them trudging wearily along the village paths carrying a child on their backs. When she stepped forward to greet them, they no longer recognized her.

"If you want to eat it, go get it yourself," her uncle said with a smile.

While they were talking, her aunt walked in carrying a plate. The moment she crossed the threshold, she said to her mom, "Second Sister-in-law, I brought you some Korean kimchi. Didn't Yanyan love eating this?"

"You're the best, Aunt! I was just talking about it, and here you are!" Dong Yanyan beamed.

Lowering her head, her aunt finally noticed her squatting on the floor tending the fire and gasped in surprise, "Yanyan can do chores now?! I didn't even see you just now—I almost stepped right on you! Are you stewing chicken in the pot?" As she spoke, she reached out and lifted the lid. A rush of steam surged upward, causing her aunt to step back a couple of paces before leaning in to peer inside the pot. She gave the contents a few stirs with the spatula, fished out a piece of meat with a pair of chopsticks, and popped it into her mouth.

"It's really savory! Yanyan, you don't need to add any more firewood. Just let it simmer on the residual heat; that's just right," she said between bites.

Dong Yanyan straightened up, supporting her aching lower back, washed her hands in the basin, and returned inside to help her mom wrap dumplings. Stepping into the room, she thought: *Good grief, the two children have made an absolute disaster of the pastry board!*

"Nannan, Bingbing, you two go play in the other room, there's good kids," she shooed both children into the east room like a hen gathering chicks.

There were three kinds of dumpling fillings: beef and radish, pork and pickled cabbage, and chive and egg. Her mom had wrapped them in different patterns to easily tell them apart. As for the art of wrapping dumplings, her mom possessed an extraordinary amount of enthusiasm and patience.

Dong Yanyan, however, felt that wrapping dumplings was an absolute waste of time—between making the dough and mincing the filling, a whole morning would vanish in a flash.

"Your grandpa and grandma just love the pickled cabbage filling. Boil this batch first, and once they're done, take them over while they still look nice," her mom instructed.