Riding the wind of rebirth

After the meat, bamboo shoots, and mushrooms are finished, various wild vegetables will be served.

Many of the wild vegetables seem to be local specialties of Liangshan, and Zhouzhi doesn't recognize them very well, so we have to rely on Jilie Azi to introduce them.

There is red amaranth, which is wild amaranth. As the saying goes, "July amaranth is worth its weight in gold," and now is the perfect time to eat it.

There is water chestnut, a vegetable that is rarely seen outside of the Liangshan Mountains in Sichuan. However, it has a unique spicy aroma and tender stems, making it a perfect match for cured meat. After eating it twice, you will fall in love with the taste.

There are preserved vegetables, which taste similar to rapeseed, but are a bit more bitter.

There is a small romaine lettuce, whose leaves are similar in shape and taste similar, but it is not as sweet as romaine lettuce and has a slightly bitter end.

There's also deer ear chives, which are called bear scallions here. In Zhouzhi, they eat it as a common dish, and everyone likes it.

The leeks are already sprouting this season, and they taste even better in hot pot than water chestnuts.

The rest are more common, belonging to the kind of "semi-wild" vegetables that every household used to grow around their houses, including blood-skin vegetables, soft-skin vegetables, and picked ear roots.

Everyone praised Zhou Zhi for choosing the best way to eat the hot pot. Actually, Zhou Zhi himself didn't expect that the hot pot would end up with all kinds of wild vegetables. It turned out that this was the restaurant's specialty, so it was a lucky coincidence.

After finishing the copper hot pot meal, the trip to Huili was almost over. When everyone returned to the guesthouse, Lan Guiyun's wife came over with dozens of kilograms of homemade pomegranate wine, saying that she had seen that everyone enjoyed it the night before and this was a small farewell gift.

They also said that the production team had called them today to inquire about the store's situation and that they were preparing to send someone over to inspect it in the next couple of days. If it turned out to be suitable, they would come back and film one or two episodes.

The production team acted quickly, which made Zhou Zhi happy for Lan Guiyun. This chef, who has a great pursuit of food and is very creative, deserves a bigger stage.

If the program were to create a surprise reunion scene with family members, thereby sparking interest in exploring the history of Sichuan cuisine, it would certainly contribute to the promotion of Sichuan cuisine.

However, Zhou Zhi felt a bit embarrassed to have received fifty jin of good wine from others, so he could only tell Lan Guiyun's wife that their signboard and restaurant's decoration style didn't quite match their location. He said he would make a plaque for them when he got back and send it over before the program crew came to film.

After leaving Huili and arriving in the suburbs, everyone stopped the car again and continued to buy pomegranates.

The pomegranates in Huili taste great. The two boxes we bought yesterday have already been mostly eaten. Everyone was very satisfied with the fruit from that orchard yesterday. Since we passed by again today, we decided to buy a little more for Xu Anxin to take away.

Compared to other fruits, pomegranates have one advantage: if stored properly, they can be stored for a very long time.

The simplest way to store it is not to pick it, but to leave it hanging on the branch. It can hang there for three or four months, even until the skin dries out, and the pomegranate seeds will still be fresh when you peel them open.

Secondly, after picking them, hang them under the eaves to air dry, just like you would with corn or peppers. The pomegranates will lose some moisture, but they won't spoil. The aroma will be slightly reduced, but the sweetness will be even greater.

Stacking them up is possible, but you need to be careful to avoid poor air circulation, as this can easily lead to rotting and the spread of disease. The best way is to wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate them. Using this method, the shelf life can reach about three months. This is great news for Xu Anxin, who loves pomegranates. Therefore, Xu Anxin plans to sign a long-term contract with this orchard and send one truckload to Shenzhen using Qiongdu's cold chain system.

The family in the orchard were delighted to see Zhou Zhi and his group stay again, but they were somewhat dumbfounded when they heard Xu Anxin's request. In the past, fruit vendors would come to their door to buy pomegranates, and the price would be driven down to the lowest possible level. Now, although Xu Anxin was more picky and had requirements for the size and appearance of the fruit, the price she offered was the "roadside retail price," and her demand was even greater than that of the fruit vendors.

Fortunately, the orchard owner's son was quite astute. He said that he could arrange the trucks himself, but the goods could only be delivered to Qiongdu. If he wanted to transport the goods from Qiongdu to other places, he only knew short-distance drivers and didn't know how to do long-distance business.

Getting to Qiongdu was enough. Xu Anxin left her phone number and paid a deposit, and the deal was considered done.

The orchard owners were also very happy. The owner's son delivered five boxes of pomegranates directly to the car, saying they were "samples" and that no extra money was needed.

Looking at the young man's expression, Zhou Zhi finally understood what it meant to have "a smile harder to suppress than an AK."

However, this is also a practical investigation to understand the pomegranate sales situation. It won't be long before Lianhe Township will also be selling pomegranates and saplings, so it's not a bad thing to find out about it early.

After returning to Lianhe Township, Zhou Zhi spent the next few days taking Xu Anxin around, helping her buy handicrafts.

Although Xu Anxin's academic performance was average, she was quite bourgeois. This was not an isolated phenomenon; many young female workers in large factories had this problem. However, with the closure and bankruptcy of many factories in mainland China, they eventually abandoned these petty-bourgeois ideas that did not help them much in order to make a living.

Xu Anxin entered the business world early enough and caught the wave of opportunity. With the gradual rise of collective housing and the construction of commercial housing, the door lock market has become a blue ocean.

Jinan Group's domestic profit growth has begun to show a clear upward trend, with a growth rate much higher than that of its overseas operations.

This also forced Xu Anran to start thinking about the group's transformation towards high-tech added value, and the opportunity to upgrade and replace machine tools and door locks, which he wanted to continue to seize.

So Xu Anxin is a lucky one. She not only retained the romance and affectation from her teenage years, but it was even a little more pronounced because of her study abroad experience.

The porcelain and lacquerware industries in Liangshan Prefecture are now on the right track. After aesthetic transformation, the products, such as wabi-sabi wood-fired porcelain and maki-e style lacquerware, have become export-earning commodities that sell well in Japan and South Korea, as well as in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where people who admire Japanese and Korean styles are very interested.

"Ms. Xu, welcome, welcome!" Dressed in a suit and tie with his hair slicked back, Wu Renzhong, looking every bit the part of a modern young cadre, warmly greeted Xu Anxin at the entrance of the Light Industry Bureau, extending his hand: "You are a nationally renowned entrepreneur, you must give us a lot of guidance in our work."

"Cough cough cough..." Zhou Zhi choked on his own saliva because of Wu Renzhong's performance, but after glancing at Wu Renzhong's colleagues, he had to maintain his authority in front of his subordinates: "Cough Director Wu, this is Ms. Xu Anxin from Jinan Group. Ms. Xu, this is our Light Industry Bureau Director, and also the youngest and most promising bureau-level cadre in Liangshan Prefecture, Comrade Wu Renzhong."

Xu Anxin was secretly laughing. She was very familiar with Wu Renzhong's style. Most of the government officials she had met over the years were like this. However, this was the first time Zhou Zhi had been so serious. Her current feeling towards Zhou Zhi was exactly the same as Zhou Zhi's feeling towards Wu Renzhong.

If her Chinese were better, the idiom "a monkey wearing a crown" would probably come to mind at this moment!

However, the necessary formalities had to be followed. The next step was for General Wu Renzhong to invite Xu Anxin and Zhou Zhi to a conference room adorned with various honors, trophies, and medals. They were accompanied by staff from the bureau's office and middle management, and listened to Director Wu brief Ms. Xu Anxin and her entourage on the recent development of the light industry in Liangshan Prefecture. (End of Chapter)