With his current speed, Qin Huai can quickly finish slicing ten yams.
Having beco familiar with yams as an ingredient, Qin Huai can easily slice yam pieces suitable for stir-frying. As for the preparation of starch water, Qin Huai is still not clear on how the starch water should vary for different ingredients. However, for fried yams, Cao Guixiang has already provided a set formula, which Qin Huai just needs to follow.
Following the formula is the easiest.
Qin Huai prepared the starch water.
He heated the oil in the pan, added the yams, and began to stir-fry.
He still waved the spatula around chaotically and without thod, but Qin Huai no longer cared about these things. He will always rember Cao Guixiang saying that fire control is about heating the ingredients evenly, and that the actions are not important.
It’s like when farming, the posture used to pull weeds isn’t important; the goal is to remove them all.
Qin Huai clearly understood the purpose of his seemingly chaotic waving of the spatula each ti, which yam pieces he needed to stir-fry, whether his stir-frying was effective, and whether he needed to speed up or slow down next ti.
During these five days, Qin Huai’s greatest realization was that learning to cook isn’t about practicing technique, but practicing awareness.
Just like when Qin Huai was in middle school, his Chinese teacher told Qin Congwen that Qin Huai’s handwriting wasn’t good, affecting his paper scores, and suggested that if possible, Qin Huai should be sent to learn hard pen calligraphy.
Qin Congwen sent Qin Huai to a hard pen calligraphy class, and the first lesson the calligraphy teacher taught him was to have the intention before the stroke.
During the first four classes, Qin Huai didn’t understand what these four words ant. He simply felt that the teacher’s handwriting was different from his, that the teacher’s writing had a balance of light and heavy, while his writing was always heavy-handed.
No matter how the teacher explained it to him, he couldn’t understand. No matter how he practiced, he couldn’t grasp what having the intention before the stroke ant. He wrote sheet after sheet of copybooks, and even when he tried his best to imitate, each stroke was wrong from the mont he put pen to paper.
One day, as he was writing, Qin Huai first visualized in his mind, and then as he brought the pen down for that character, he suddenly understood what having the intention before the stroke ant.
It was also from then on that Qin Huai understood the concept of a flash of insight.
It really happens in an instant, when sothing previously unclear suddenly becos clear. This clarity could be the result of sufficient practice accumulation, or it could be the mont of realization, but regardless, the feeling at the mont of insight is truly wonderful.
At this mont, it was just like back then.
Qin Huai couldn’t rember how many plates he had already cooked; he just knew that there wasn’t much yam left from what he had just sliced, probably enough for two more plates at most.
He was swinging the spatula, yet not just swinging the spatula.
He didn’t know why he would zone out while cooking, recalling the tis of learning hard pen calligraphy, sitting at the desk every day, struggling to understand, feeling very troubled.
Back then, he gripped the pen very tightly, wishing to use all his strength in writing each character, almost piercing the paper with the pen tip.
The teacher advised him to write with a lighter touch, saying there was no need to press so hard, but he simply couldn’t do it lightly.
Feeling like he was wasting the money of his adoptive parents, Zhao Rong wanted Qin Huai to quickly develop good handwriting and enrolled him in a one-on-one hard pen calligraphy class, costing 110 yuan per hour.
At that ti, the at buns at the Qin Family Breakfast Shop were only 1 yuan each, stead buns 0.5 yuan, and vegetable buns 0.7 yuan.
The children at the Sanmalu Children’s Welfare Institute had yet to achieve freedom to eat vegetable buns, the orphanage hadn’t moved to the outskirts, and Qin Huai would occasionally get dragged back to the orphanage to help with planting, sothing the other children couldn’t grasp.
At that ti, Qin Huai was very anxious, feeling that he was wasting the money of his adoptive parents. Every class he took ant his parents had to sell many buns to make up for it, yet after four classes, he hadn’t improved at all, and he couldn’t even understand what the teacher was saying.
So, Qin Huai used a lot of force when writing characters, believing that if he put more effort in, the characters would look better, and his adoptive parents’ money wouldn’t be wasted.
Every day after howork, he would write many, many characters. Since his grip was too tight and his posture incorrect, his index finger developed a small blister, and his pinky finger was painfully pressed against the notebook.
Then one evening, after finishing his howork and writing as usual at the desk, Zhao Rong brought him a cup of hot milk and told him to drink it after finishing that page and go to bed early.
After delivering the milk, Zhao Rong went to bed, and that night, sipping milk, Qin Huai quietly cried—not from the pain in his writing hand, but because it was already 11 PM, and Zhao Rong, who had to get up by 3 AM, usually went to bed by 9 PM.
For as long as he sipped that milk, Qin Huai cried. Afterward, he wiped away his tears and continued to write.
Still not getting it right.
When that sheet only had a few spaces left, after forcefully finishing a stroke, Qin Huai’s hand hurt so much that he had to apply less pressure, unexpectedly finding that this stroke was more successful than any before.
He finally understood the aning of what the hard pen calligraphy teacher had said.
The sa goes for now.
These past few days, Cao Guixiang has been telling Qin Huai that the motion of stir-frying isn’t important. During demonstrations, she would imitate Qin Huai’s way of stir-frying, as well as use her habitual actions to stir-fry, and each dish turned out the sa, flawless.
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