Wedding Banquet

  On the evening of June 5th, Hai Jufu's courtyard had already been decorated with new decorations, and the wedding canopy and colorful lanterns were all in place, waiting to be used formally tomorrow. The dozens of villagers who helped out at Hai Jufu's house for a day were now seated around four large tables, enjoying the various dishes that were being served one after another.

  "Ah Fu, for the second child's wedding preparations and all that, I won't say anything else, but just this master chef you've invited is enough to give you face." An old man with a face full of wrinkles like orange peel, under the eager gaze of the crowd sitting around the table, picked up the last piece of oilseed rape from the plate and put it in his mouth, closed his eyes in rapture, smacked his lips a few times before swallowing, then said to Hai Ju Fu sitting beside him with an air of superiority.

  This old man is called Hai Si Quan, and although he's already over 80 years old this year, his ears aren't deaf and his eyes aren't blurry, his waist is still straight as a pen, and his voice is still as loud as thunder. Two words - robust! The old man's status in the village isn't ordinary, he's not the oldest among all the Hai surname villagers, but he has the highest seniority. How high is his seniority? Even Hai Ju Fu, who's already a grandfather, has to call this old man "Fourth Grandfather"! So it's no wonder that the young and middle-aged men at the table looked at the old man taking the last dish from the plate, although they swallowed their saliva, they didn't dare reach out to grab it.

  After Old Man Hai finished his last mouthful, the old man sitting on the other side of Hai Ju Fu spoke up: "Yes, Ah Fu. The culinary skills of this master chef you invited are not bad, no, they're top-notch! However... although the dishes were done well, they were served a bit slowly!"

  The second old man who spoke was called Hai Jingde, whose age was similar to that of Hai Si Quan, but he was one generation younger and was the uncle of Hai Ju Fu. Therefore, when responding to this person, Hai Ju Fu still had to smile. Seeing that a plain dish of stir-fried rape in oil had been divided up completely within less than a minute after it was placed on the table, Hai Ju Fu said with a smiling face: "Third Uncle, this dish wasn't served slowly. Everyone just sat down for a short while and six dishes have already come out. Shouldn't we say that everyone is eating too quickly?"

  Hai Jufu looked around at the other three tables and saw that even the old men at the head table had finished several dishes, let alone the young and strong people at the other three tables. They had already drunk all the soup from the previous few dishes, and were now staring eagerly at the small road leading to the backyard where the stove was located.

  "Oh? Really?" Hai Jingde looked up at the sky and suddenly said: "It's not, is it? When I sat down earlier, the sun had just set, and now the sky is still bright!"

  Seeing the elderly gentlemen and ladies at the head table, as well as the young couples at other tables, all revealing eager and expectant expressions, Hai Yunfu hesitantly asked the elder gentleman at the head of the table, Hai Si Quan: "Shall I... go take a look in the back?"

  "Then what are you still doing here? Hurry up and go!" Old Four, the old master, was not an exception either. To say nothing of other things, just this one point of being greedy for food is comparable to those little rascals who wear open-crotch pants and run around wildly with their little birds exposed.

  Hai Ju Fu hastily took orders and left the table, heading towards the backyard where the stoves were placed.

  In the backyard, Zhang Jin was stirring two large pots with a iron shovel, his bare back glistening with sweat. Beads of perspiration on his forehead fell onto the hot stove, sizzling and rising as a wisp of white vapor.

  Under the "secret supervision" of Hai Jufu on one side, soon, the small half pot of "Yellow Wine Beef Liver" on the left stove was stir-fried with a fragrant aroma. Zhang Jin quickly turned off the blower on the left stove, and the iron shovel scooped up four shovels, loading each of the four plates arranged in a row next to it. He then hurriedly said to Hai Gensheng and his wife, who were helping out beside him: "Gensheng brother, sister-in-law, another dish is ready, you take them out!" After covering the large pot of Seafood Soup on the right stove with a lid and reducing the blower's power, he finally had the energy to pull down the towel hanging on one side and wipe the sweat from his forehead.

  When Zhang Jin picked up the towel, he inadvertently caught a glimpse of Hai Jufu standing beside him for a while. Zhang Jin joked: "Uncle Jufu, why aren't you eating? Won't you trust me? Are you afraid I'll mess it up, so you're here to supervise me?" Because today Zhang Jin saw too many old men with the surname Hai, he had no choice but to change his address for Hai Jufu, from "Uncle Hai" to "Uncle Jufu".

  Hai Jufu handed Zhang Jin a cigarette and lit it for him, then smiled and said: "Uncle can't not believe you! Not to mention anything else, today you really gave Uncle face! Your craftsmanship is unmatched! This belongs to you." As he spoke, Hai Jufu raised his thumb high in the air.

  They had just chatted for a couple of sentences when Haigen Sheng had already cleaned the big pot that was used to stir-fry 'Huangjiu Niugan'. Zhang Jin was about to start preparing the next dish. Hai Jufu hastily stopped him, "Little Zhang, look at you, all sweaty from exhaustion. Don't rush, take a break first."

  …………

  The 'Thanksgiving Dinner' on the eve of the wedding banquet was perfect under Zhang's superb culinary skills. Although all the villagers who helped out ate until they were stuffed and felt uncomfortable, they still felt like they hadn't eaten enough and looked forward to the next day's wedding banquet with eager anticipation.

  The next day, near noon, when Zhang Jin was still busy preparing food for the wedding banquet and dinner at Haiju's house, his mobile phone in his pocket suddenly rang.

  Zhang Jin casually pulled out his mobile phone and pressed the answer button without looking at the caller ID, putting it to his ear: "Hello, I'm Zhang Jin. Who is this?"

  "Boss, it's me, Old Three! Old Four and I are almost at the seaside village, can you meet us at the entrance?" Xiao Fei's loud voice was still powerful even through the receiver, making Zhang Jin wrinkle his brow involuntarily.

  "What did you come here for?"

  "Haha, we're here for a wedding and also visiting relatives and friends!" Xiao Fei replied with a smile.

  Before Zhang Jin could continue asking, Xiao Fei hastily said: "Stop nagging, we're almost there. Hurry up and come pick us up. It's my car." Then he hung up the phone.

  Zhang Jin was helpless, and embarrassed to ask Hai Gen Sheng, who was busy helping him on the side: "Brother Gen Sheng, I have two friends coming over, can you find someone to help me pick them up at the village entrance? They should be driving that gray Land Rover I saw when I first came here."

  Hagen readily agreed and pulled over a 13 or 14-year-old kid, gave him some instructions, and then chased the kid away.

  After a while, Xiao Fei and Wei Feng brought Lan Feifei and Mu Xinran into the backyard that served as the wedding banquet kitchen when Zhang Jin quickly came to greet them. First, he exchanged greetings with his two younger siblings before fiercely saying to Xiao Fei and Wei Feng: "What are you two doing here causing trouble? What business do you have with someone else's wedding? Do you know them?"

  "Alright, alright, boss, what's the big deal? Of course, we won't refuse strangers at a wedding banquet! Have you ever seen anyone being chased away from a wedding? Besides, in college, you even took us to crash weddings of people we didn't know just for the free food!"

  Wei Feng was talking about another legendary event of Zhang Jin's university days. At that time, Zhang Jin, who came from an ordinary family, spent money like water because of his pursuit of girls, and often by mid-month he had already run out of pocket money and had to rely on his brothers for help. However, due to the strict family education and limited funds of his brothers, as well as their own extravagant spending habits, even the young masters like Xiao Fei and Wei Feng would often lament that "even the landlord's family has no surplus grain".

  So one month-end, several people who had not eaten meat for days saw a hotel holding a grand wedding and Zhang Jin's head turned to produce the idea of ??sneaking into the meal. First, use 'borrowing the restroom' as an excuse to mix into the hotel, after mixing over the gift-giving session, several people, under Zhang Jin's encouragement, openly sat into the banquet hall in the name of the groom's distant relatives, and cleverly chose a table with the bride's friends. With the cover of several brothers, they did not let anyone see through their trick. After devouring a big meal, they escaped quickly.

  Regarding the old affair of Weifeng, Zhang Jin was somewhat tongue-tied after being rebuked with a straightforward and confident tone. This kind of argument that uses someone else's spear to attack their own shield is indeed difficult to refute. After a while, Zhang Jin finally came up with a reason to refute: "I took you guys to freeload because it was in the city, where everyone didn't know each other, so we could take advantage of the situation. But this Haowai Village is almost all one family, who doesn't know who? How many relatives can come? Can you mix in? Besides, at least that kid who just received you knew you were brought by me, aren't you embarrassing me?"

  Zhang Jin's flustered appearance finally made Lan Feifei giggle and say in a soft voice, "Brother Zhang Jin, don't listen to Fengfeng. We've all given betrothal gifts before. In the southeast of Guangdong, weddings are always like this. Even if strangers come to congratulate the newlyweds, the bride's family welcomes them."

  As for what Lan Fei said about being a local born and bred, Zhang Jin naturally believed it and let out a sigh of relief.

  However, Wei Feng, who was enjoying teasing Lao Da, was not satisfied. He stretched out his hand and lightly patted Lan Fei Fei's buttocks, saying with an evil expression: "How dare you, you actually dared to ruin your man's show? Wait until we get home and I'll deal with you severely!"

  Although Wei Feng's slap on the butt and the ambiguous word "big punishment" made Lan Fei Fei blush, she still playfully stuck out her tongue and made a face. "The worst that Windy can do is bully people." After finishing speaking, before Wei Feng's right hand fell again, she quickly covered her buttocks with both hands and hid behind Mu Xin Ran, learning from the ostrich.

  The two banquets in the afternoon and evening, under Zhang Jin's management, naturally made all the relatives and friends of both sexes who attended the banquet praise them without exception. When the eight dishes and eight bowls on each table were removed, not only was there no food or soup left inside, but they were also spotlessly clean, as if they had been washed. After the formal banquet in the evening, the task of cleaning up the remaining food naturally would not fall to Zhang Jin, the master chef who had been busy all day, but was helped by fellow villagers.