Riding the wind of rebirth

Su cuisine itself is one of the eight major cuisines. There is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below. It has been a land of fish and rice and a land of delicious food since ancient times.

This cuisine is divided into several schools in the same way as Sichuan cuisine. It is also composed of four schools: Jinling, Huaiyang, Suxi, and Xuhai. It tastes fresh, salty and slightly sweet, and prefers the five pungent vegetables. It focuses on the original flavor and is considered to be the representative of the ancient "Southern flavor".

The land of fish and rice is rich in products, and famous aquatic products include Yangtze River delicacies, Taihu whitebait, and Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs. Special vegetables include Taihu water shield, Huai'an cattail leaf, Baoying lotus root, as well as chestnuts, rice stem, wild rice stem, winter bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, etc.

However, banquet dishes must be seasonal. It is winter now, and many famous seafood products are not available.

However, the banquet table was still filled with a large number of cold dishes, including Nanjing lake-cooked duck, fragrant tripe, Yangzhou goose, Rugao ham, Jingjiang meat jerky, crystal pork trotters, salted duck, and many famous dishes alone.

However, these dishes do not need to be cooked in advance, as they are basically a "prepared dish series", similar to the bacon and sausages in Shuzhong in winter.

But the hot dishes are amazing. Farewell My Concubine has just become famous these days and this dish is rarely served in ordinary restaurants. After all, there are no artificially farmed soft-shelled turtles yet, so they have to be wild ones, which is a bit expensive.

There are also lion head, squirrel mandarin fish, green snail shrimp, honey-glazed fire square, cherry meat, fried eel paste, boiled shredded pork with pork and preserved vegetables, prawns, Liangxi crispy eel, and three-piece duck, which made Zhouzhi and Mai Xiaomiao dizzy with their fragrance.

Many of the dishes here are very sophisticated.

For example, the seemingly simple boiled dried bean curd is actually related to Emperor Qianlong's trip to the south of the Yangtze River in the Qing Dynasty. At that time, Yangzhou local officials hired famous chefs to cook delicacies for the emperor. One of the dishes was "Nine-strand Soup", which was made of dried bean curd shreds and ham shreds stewed in chicken soup, and it tasted extremely delicious.

The dried shredded silk used here looks a bit like the Qianzhang commonly used in the north, but it is actually Huaiyang's Fanggan. The dried shredded silk should be cut into pieces as thick as matchsticks, blanched twice in boiling water, and then refined with chicken broth, cooked chicken shreds, and a variety of ingredients.

In addition to being a dish that requires knife skills, it is also a dish that requires the right amount of cooking time. It has bright colors, white and soft dried shredded vegetables, and the side dishes are tender and delicious.

Moreover, the side dishes of this dish need to change according to the season. In spring, it should be fresh, with bamboo clams; in summer, it should be crispy, with crispy shredded rice; in autumn, it should be fragrant, with crab roe; in winter, it should be light, with bamboo shoots and vegetables; this is a bad habit developed by the wealthy Huaiyang salt merchants in ancient times, and they are extremely particular about it.

Another example is a dish called Three-piece Duck, which is also a famous traditional dish in Yangzhou. The Qing Dynasty's "Diao Ding Ji" once recorded: "The fat domestic duck is boneless, and the pressed duck is also boneless, stuffed into the domestic duck's stomach, steamed to be very tender, and served whole." Later, Yangzhou chefs put lake duck, wild duck and pigeon together, stewed in Yixing purple clay pot, and stewed over low heat with a lot of soup. The domestic duck is fat and tender, the wild duck is crispy, and the pigeon is tender and fresh, with a unique flavor.

This dish also uses wild ducks, but they are artificially bred mallards, which are the most widely domesticated waterfowl in the world. They are said to come from Dongtai, Jiangsu Province, and have a nickname called "official duck". I wonder if it is because only officials could afford to eat it in the past.

Jiangsu Province also has its own good wines, represented by "Three Ditches and One River", namely Tanggou, Shuanggou, Gaogou and Yanghe. Different from Sichuan-style wines with strong aroma, prominent cellar fragrance and a strong and aged taste, the wines from the Three Ditches and One River are characterized by mellow, sweet, clean and refreshing taste, which is another kind of flavor.

Another local specialty is the rice wine from Huishan and Danyang.

In order to take care of Mai Xiaomiao and several ladies, Director Liu specially warmed up the Huishan rice wine and added dried plums, shredded ginger, and rock sugar. Zhou Zhi couldn't help but drink a glass, and it tasted quite good.

The meal was a great pleasure for both hosts and guests, and the investment intention was initially finalized during the exchange of cups.

With the advent of the information age and the popularity of the Internet industry, the stocks that Zhou Zhi had previously invested in the information technology industry and the Internet industry entered a period of terrifying growth.

Zhou Zhi had made a few big gains before, amounting to nearly $1 billion, and had invested almost all of it in these two industries. Now the money has grown several times. However, the money still had great uses and could not be moved.

Of course, Clover Group earns billions of dollars a year from IP sharing in many overseas industries such as chips, MP3, DVD, TYPE-C interface, Microsoft foundry, etc. However, those are all circulating funds for corporate development, such as the neural network laboratory built by Mai Xiaomiao, the Shanghai smart chip base, storage chip base, industrial control chip base, etc., which are all gold-devouring behemoths.

Zhouzhi can only share dividends for this part at most.

On the contrary, it is the dividends from Clover Group’s many domestic industries that make Zhou Zhi’s “pocket money” very substantial.

His dividends from domestic IC card chips are no less than Hu Changfeng, his dividends from industrial control chips are no less than Li Guangnan, and his dividends from storage chips are no less than Fujio Masuoka. In addition, there are two major dividends from VCD and DVD chips. The profit from the chip industry alone is already lucrative enough.

In addition to investing in stocks, real estate, and purchasing calligraphy and paintings, and porcelain, Zhou Zhi still had plenty of pocket money, a sum so large that it made him numb.

Finally, everyone reached an agreement. Zhou Zhi invested 26 million in the name of AXA Fund's domestic investment department, which was equivalent to a premium of 25 million, to acquire part of the shares held by Suzhou State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, the jade carving company, and Wanjia Group. Eventually, the four parties formed a shareholding structure of 32:17::.

In this way, the combined shareholding ratio of the jade carving factory and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission reached 51%. Even if Wanjia Group and Zhouzhi joined forces, they would not be able to overthrow the board of directors.

Given the relationship between Lin Wanqiu and Zhou Zhi, the Wanjia Group would not be unhappy, because Zhou Zhi's investment was not small, and the premium was sufficient, and he would not be too involved in the company's management affairs. He was purely an equity investor who was optimistic about the company's development.

On the other hand, Zhouzhi established a third-party guarantee company with self-raised funds. The company will invest 50 million yuan in advance, half of which will be used as its own development fund and the other half will be used to purchase real estate in Suzhou and Hangzhou.

This part of the property can be used as a warehouse to store jade materials and mortgage the studio's works, and can also be used as collateral for loans from guarantee companies to banks.

This is the general mode of operation. The detailed recruitment and organization work is fully entrusted to the Hong Kong office, which is the strength of Hongsheng Accounting Firm.

The candidate for general manager, Xu Zhiman, was unwilling to take the position, so Zhou Zhi thought of another person, Xu Gang's cousin, Xia Mili.

Since the trip to Northern Xinjiang, Xia Mili has been helping Zhou Zhi to handle the purchasing business of jade materials in Northern Xinjiang, and now he has also set foot in Qinghai and Da Russia.

The Qinghai material from Zhouzhi is a little bit looked down upon, but there are many high-quality Russian materials from the mines. Except for some white jade whose quality is only lower than 95 Yutian grade one, the quality of jasper is even much higher than that of Hetian material.

One bad thing about Hetian jade is that there are many black spots in the material and very little pure material. Russian jade does not have this problem. There are also many new varieties such as cat's eye and ice jade, and the potential is huge.

The economic situation in Great Russia is very bad now, and jade materials are almost cheap. Moreover, there are enough of them, unlike the tight supply of Hetian materials. Zhou Zhi can instruct Xia Mili to select the best from the best.

Xia Mili was also very helpful and bought many good products for Zhou Zhi. Zhou Zhi felt that this was a good opportunity for Xia Mili to be promoted. (End of this chapter)