Riding the wind of rebirth

Clover Group's only advantage in this area is its intellectual property. As the Chinese product transformation unit of AXA's intellectual property division, Clover Group needs to find partners in China. Currently, it is cooperating with Blue Sky Sunshine Group on the battery sector.

By the time all these instructions were given, the meeting had already gone on until midnight. When the meeting room door was opened, Feng Xueshan was standing at the door.

Wearing a high-end executive suit, Feng Xueshan looked quite capable. After becoming a mother, her more delicate facial features added a touch of gentleness, making her even more beautiful.

However, Zhou Zhi frowned as soon as he saw her: "How many days of maternity leave is allowed at the company? Why are you already back at work?"

Unexpectedly, Feng Xueshan didn't take the bait at all: "It's noon, do you and Xiao Miao want to have lunch here?"

"How about... we forget about it?" Zhou Zhi said. "Xiao Miao and I are going to the Academician Building to cook dinner for Dean Mai. We can still go buy groceries now."

"Since you're determined to make a good impression, I won't stop you," Feng Xueshan said with a smile. "Next time, could you please let our HR department know before you come to work, or perhaps we could assign you and Xiao Miao a secretary?"

"No, no, no..." Zhou Zhi was startled: "Next time, I'll definitely let you know before I come next time."

“Then I’ll see the chairman off.” Feng Xueshan laughed. “You scared our little sister in HR so much that she had to rush over from the Digital Plaza to save the day.”

“It’s not that serious,” Zhou Zhi said. “It was the same before, wasn’t it?”

“Now that the group is on the right track, everything needs to be managed in a standardized manner.” Feng Xueshan and Zhou Zhimai Xiaomiao walked out side by side: “You should set an example first.”

Zhou Zhi inexplicably thought of Liu Bang. Although he learned about the "joy of being an emperor" after the Confucian scholars rectified the court etiquette, he lost the pleasure of sitting with his old brothers, drinking heartily, getting up to draw his sword and strike a pillar when he was in high spirits, and singing the "Song of the Great Wind".

However, what Feng Xueshan said was the truth, and if it was the truth, then we had to listen to it. Zhou Zhi could only nod to show that he had been taught.

After leaving the computational center, Zhou Zhi took Mai Xiaomiao to a nearby vegetable market to buy groceries, and then went to the Academician Building.

Now that Shuda University has money, it has finally allocated some funds to improve the accommodation conditions for professors and lecturers. The most luxurious housing is small villas, which are concentrated near Liulin Village.

Actually, not all academicians live here. For example, Professor Gu still lives in the old dormitory in Taohua Village. And not all the residents here are academicians, but the proportion of academicians is very high. Therefore, this villa community is called "Academician Building" by teachers and students.

The most distinctive feature of the academicians' building is its quietness; it would even be an exaggeration to describe it as deserted. Zhou Zhi discovered that the senior intellectuals living here seem to have no family members around them, and many of them are even abroad, which is also a major characteristic of this era.

When Liu Ma saw Zhou Zhi carrying a plastic bag full of ingredients into the courtyard, she laughed as she was harvesting vegetables: "Old Mai, you only said you were coming for dinner on the phone. I thought you would come in the afternoon. You haven't had lunch yet, have you?"

"Aunt Liu, are you preparing to make dried radish?" Zhou Zhi asked. "We haven't had lunch yet. We were originally planning to eat out, but Xiao Miao saw the tomatoes and wanted to eat tomato and egg noodles, so we decided to come back and make it ourselves. Aunt Liu, let's have steamed pork with rice flour for dinner. We've already discussed it with Academician Mai."

"Okay, sure." Aunt Liu nodded. "Then I'll go make it for you."

"No need, no need," Zhou Zhi said with a smile. "You need to keep your hands clean when making dried radish, and you can't touch oil. You go ahead with your work, I'll go make the noodles."

"Well, you're a skilled cook in the kitchen, so I'll take care of this for now." Tomato and egg noodles actually have two ways of being made. One way is to boil the tomato and egg soup in a bowl, then boil water in a separate pot to cook the noodles, and then add the cooked noodles to the tomato and egg soup. This way, the noodle soup is clearer.

Another method is to cook the noodles directly in the tomato soup. This one-pot stew will result in a thick, sticky noodle soup.

The second approach is a bit lazy, but Mai Xiaomiao just happens to like this kind of food, so Zhou Zhi is naturally happy to comply.

They added a little sesame oil and sprinkled some chopped green onions, then carried their bowls of noodles to the courtyard. They ate their noodles while watching Aunt Liu work and chatting with her.

After Liu Ma became the mistress of the house, she brought many changes to the home, making Zhou Zhi and Mai Xiaomiao feel a new warmth in the house.

In other words, it's the feeling that the concept of "home" should have.

The curtains were changed to a light blue outer fabric curtain and a beige inner sheer curtain. The living room had many more things that the woman had added—potted plants, sofa cushions, a small blanket to cover her legs while watching TV, a knitting dustpan, and an unfinished sweater…

Aunt Liu is a diligent person. She keeps the house and surrounding area very clean. In the flower bed in the yard, which had been unused for a long time, she planted gardenias, roses and other flowers, as well as two grapevines and some scallions and garlic.

The grapes are still too small; it's not time to train the vines and add trellises yet. In a corner of the small terrace at the end of the flower bed, there are several jars, some upside down and some upright.

The upside-down container is a salted vegetable jar, containing pickled mustard greens and pickled mustard tubers; the upright container is a pickled vegetable jar, one containing pickled chili peppers and ginger, and the other containing pickled cabbage, pickled radishes, pickled bamboo shoots, and the like.

What Aunt Liu is making now is dried radish. She cuts radishes into strips, dries them to remove most of the moisture, adds salt and Sichuan peppercorns, rubs them together, then presses them firmly into a jar, puts in bamboo shoots or lotus leaves, adds bamboo strips to secure them, then inverts the jar onto a plate, adds water to the plate to isolate it from the air, and the dried radish inside ferments in this environment for a few weeks. Then it can be taken out, diced, and mixed with chili oil and five-spice powder to make a fragrant side dish.

Alternatively, you can mix it with fermented black beans; it's a perfect match for porridge in the morning.

However, due to the local soil and water conditions, the flavor of this type of food made in Lianhe Township has never been very good, so Zhouzhi always brings it from outside.

"Aunt Liu, our business in Liangshan Prefecture has come to an end, and we won't be staying there for long anymore," Zhou Zhi reported to Aunt Liu while eating noodles.

"That's wonderful," said Aunt Liu. "So you'll be staying in Chengdu more often then?"

"That's not necessarily true; they'll probably be running around everywhere," Zhou Zhi said with a smile. "But they'll definitely be spending more time in Chengdu than before."

“Old Mai spends most of the month traveling. The remaining half month is spent working overtime almost every day. He says he has to race against time.” Aunt Liu seems to have gotten used to it: “Fortunately, he comes home for dinner now. If he can’t, I’ll bring him the food.”

Zhou Zhi now has a deeper understanding of the relationship between two people. The most important thing in a relationship is spiritual harmony and resonance. Things like being well-matched in terms of social status or having common interests are secondary.

The most important thing is the alignment of their values, as well as their tolerance and appreciation for each other. As for common ground, Zhou Zhi and Mai Xiaomiao don't really have much in common. One is a humanities major and the other is a science major, and both are quite profound, to the point that the other can't understand them. As for being a good match, one comes from an ordinary civil servant family and the other from an academic elite family, so they are completely unrelated.

The important thing is that both of them have become strong enough to no longer rely on their respective families, and at the same time, they are in harmony and unity in spirit. When they are together, they both "lower their intelligence," and they are happy even playing children's games together. That is enough. (End of this chapter)