Setting Up Stalls – Chapter 177

How Are You

By the time Shen Yiqiu arrived for work, this was the scene she saw.

On the originally quiet and clean road, there were many small street vendors setting up stalls. At first, Shen Yiqiu thought she had seen wrong, or that she hadn’t arrived at the location yet. As a result, the driver said, “Ms. Shen, we have arrived,” and only then did Shen Yiqiu realize that she had already arrived at the research institute.

She was a bit dazed, nodded her head, and then got out of the car.

Shen Yiqiu was a person with a little bit of a neat freak tendency; she couldn’t really accept street stall snacks. Sun Miao’s stall was a complete accident, because she sold yangyu potato cake, and it looked exceptionally clean.

The moment she saw that the entrance to the research institute was full of small stalls, Shen Yiqiu’s brows actually furrowed a little. But she still walked towards the small stall she was familiar with, preparing to buy a portion of yangyu potato cake to eat.

Yesterday, Shen Yiqiu had managed to buy some and brought it to the office to eat. Although it was still as delicious as the day before, the events that had just happened kept turning over in her mind, making her somewhat unable to taste her food. A small stall boss like Sun Miao, who was so insistent on her principles, was actually rarely seen.

Even Shen Yiqiu herself, when faced with others cutting in line, after her original first choice of pretending nothing had happened, found it difficult to do anything. It was inevitable that the thought of “one more matter is not as good as one less matter”¹ would cross her mind.

But Sun Miao was not like that. She did not hold such a thought, but only abided by the most simple idea: cutting in line is wrong. She sternly refused the man’s attempt to cut in line. Not only was she not afraid of him, she dared to face him directly, and even defeat him.

With just this kind of character, Shen Yiqiu felt that Sun Miao would not be a black-hearted² merchant with an unclean stall.

In fact, it was indeed as Shen Yiqiu thought. Sun Miao’s ingredients were very clean. As she was older, her stomach was delicate. Father Su had always forbidden her from eating things from outside, but Shen Yiqiu had eaten the yangyu potato cake for two days without having any issues like diarrhea, which was enough to prove that Sun Miao’s yangyu potato cake was very clean.

Especially under the condition of adding so much chili.

Her love for the yangyu potato cake, coupled with her affirmation of Sun Miao’s character, allowed Shen Yiqiu to walk past so many stalls to arrive in front of Sun Miao.

It was just that on the way over, Shen Yiqiu also discovered something: the small stalls here all seemed to be quite clean. Each stall had its own trash can, fitted with a garbage bag—the kind with a lid, no less—and would even remind customers that if they finished eating, they could throw the trash directly into the trash can.

Because of the existence of such a trash can, there wasn’t the kind of scene in front of these stalls that Shen Yiqiu had seen before—the area in front of the stall being dirty, messy, and poor, with various skewers, small used napkins, and other trash scattered all over the ground.

And places where stalls were often set up would tend to leave behind a lot of grease stains. The originally clean and tidy ground could possibly become black and greasy.

But if it were all these small vendors, it shouldn’t become like that. Shen Yiqiu personally saw a customer accidentally spill the rice noodles they bought on the ground, and that area became a messy and dirty patch. The stall owner was a woman of about thirty-six or thirty-seven. While saying, “It’s okay, I’ll get it, everyone please make way,” she came out from behind the stall with cleaning tools.

There were still many customers in front of her stall. She would rather let the customers wait for a while than not clean up the area in front of her first.

Fortunately, she worked efficiently. Just as Shen Yiqiu was about to walk to the front of her stall, the person had already cleaned up the ground, leaving only some water stains. She even smiled at Shen Yiqiu and said to her: “Be careful, the ground is slippery. I just mopped.”

Shen Yiqiu nodded. After walking past, however, she became somewhat silent.

She didn’t quite understand. Was it because she hadn’t browsed roadside stalls for too long, and that’s why she didn’t know that the stalls now… were actually all like this? Or was it that birds of a feather flock together? Because that yangyu potato cake stall was a clean stall, so the ones around her were also clean?

Shen Yiqiu had actually guessed a part of it right; it was indeed because of the latter. Sun Miao had called the Lemon Tea Boss, and the ones the Lemon Tea Boss notified were definitely stall owners who had obtained permits, modified their stall carts to meet regulations, and had also undergone training from the relevant departments.

These stall owners had the intention to apply for permits, which proved that they originally wanted to run their businesses properly and not engage in those crooked ways. After the rectifications, they became even cleaner. Although due to the cost of materials, their selling prices were a tiny bit more expensive than other roadside stalls, both their level of cleanliness and taste were also better.

However, the customers here accepted this price well, because in this world, there also exist roadside stall assassins³.

The Lemon Tea Boss, who was chatting with Sun Miao, was over there saying: “Don’t look at how the few small stalls that came with me sell for a little bit more than the average ones, but everyone has also learned from you to clearly mark their prices. Those who see it and are not happy can just turn around and leave, and that’s that. Last time, the cat slave and I went to browse at the entrance of the education park at night. There was a stall we hadn’t seen before, and she insisted on buying from it. Guess what happened?”

“Hey, that was simply a roadside stall assassin! The fried skewers that this big brother next to us sells, I’m not bragging, they’re really delicious, and the price is okay. When the cat slave and I buy a little, for the two of us to have as a late-night snack, 30 or 40 yuan can get it done. But that stall, hmph, she just took about seven or eight skewers, and it was also 45!”

The Lemon Tea Boss seemed to have remembered that fried skewer incident firmly; she described it with such clarity. At this moment, the Cat Master had already left with Niuniu, otherwise she would have been righteously indignant along with her.

Sun Miao nodded, indicating she understood. She had also encountered roadside stall assassins. Before she transmigrated, when she was still working at a company, she bought a vegetable pancake on her way home from work, and they asked her for 20. But how poor was Sun Miao back then? How could she possibly agree to pay that? She argued back and forth with the stall owner for a hundred or so sentences before finally getting the price down to a normal one, and only then did she take it and leave.

But the Cat Master was thin-skinned and was too embarrassed to argue, so she could only pay the money and go home.

This time, the Lemon Tea Boss kept talking about this matter: “She’s also really thoughtless. How much money does she make in a month, to dare to spend so much money on skewers. The most crucial thing is, it wasn’t even tasty.” The Lemon Tea Boss described in detail how terrible those skewers were, especially the starch sausage⁴.

Logically speaking, it’s very difficult for a deep-fried starch sausage to be bad. As long as the outside is fried until crispy, it can be taken out. Because the starch sausage itself has flavor, just brushing a little bit of sauce on it, not too thick, just a little, is fine. It doesn’t matter what kind of sauce it is; sprinkling some chili powder, smearing on some ketchup, or even cumin or plum⁵ powder would all work. They all claim to have their own unique flavor and are very delicious.

Like the uncle at the fried skewer stall next door, he had his own secret sauce, a sweet and spicy flavor. With that sweet and spicy sauce coated on the outside of the starch sausage, the taste was indescribably good.

But in the Lemon Tea Boss’s mouth, that starch sausage was truly disgusting to the extreme.

A fried starch sausage, logically, should be crispy. But in reality, the taste of this fried skewer was dry as heck. It felt like it had been re-fried many times; it tasted dry, but was not crispy at all. The further you ate into it, the more it was like chewing on concrete residue. In short, it was not something for human consumption.

The powder coated on the outside was not tasty either; it was limp and also particularly salty.

It was the Cat Master who bought the fried skewers. After she ate them, she said they weren’t good and asked the Lemon Tea Boss to go over and try them. She only took one bite before spitting it out directly, and even cursed the Cat Master for having ill intentions, deliberately giving her that kind of fried starch sausage to eat.

Just listening to the Lemon Tea Boss’s description made Sun Miao feel astonished. She hadn’t eaten it, but just this description made the fried starch sausage sound exceptionally terrible. To be able to make a starch sausage like this, that person was also a talent.

Not only did Sun Miao think so, but the other customers waiting in line around them also thought so.

“If I ate a starch sausage like that, I would definitely go back and find that boss. It’s too disgusting.”

The customers in line expressed their own opinions. The Lemon Tea Boss waved her hand: “But the eyes of the masses are sharp as snow⁶. A boss like that can’t do business for long. Our area is an education park, with many students around. They all have their own group chats, and soon it spread from one to ten, and ten to a hundred. No one went to his place to buy fried skewers anymore. So after a few days, he ran away with his tail between his legs.”

“Speaking of which, at first I thought Little Boss Sun was a stall assassin, but it turns out I was measuring the stomach of a gentleman with the heart of a petty person⁷. What Little Boss Sun makes is exceptionally delicious!”

The topic turned, and the situation once again became everyone praising Sun Miao.

By the time Shen Yiqiu came over to line up, she heard everyone not being stingy with their words of praise, complimenting how delicious Sun Miao’s cooking was. Especially those at the front of the line; they either asked Sun Miao if she was okay and if that trouble-making man from yesterday had bullied her, or they praised how delicious what Sun Miao made was, or they both inquired about her situation and praised her.

Shen Yiqiu fell into a brief silence. She didn’t quite understand this world anymore. Could it be that the requirements for buying food from a street stall were so high now? You also had to show concern for and praise the stall owner?

People who held the same thoughts as Shen Yiqiu were actually not in the minority, but many of the researchers were the type who were more socially anxious. In their own professional fields, each of them was a person who dared to challenge authority, but at a time like this, a herd mentality inevitably emerged.

Even those who originally didn’t plan to say anything also racked their brains to utter words of praise to Sun Miao.

However, they were all science students, so their literary cultivation was relatively average. Especially when many people in front of them had already said everything, they didn’t know what else to say. After a long time, they managed to squeeze out a sentence: “Little boss, what you make is really delicious.”

Shen Yiqiu watched as the number of people in front of her dwindled, and she herself felt a bit dazed. She was frantically brainstorming in her mind, thinking that she must say something. As a university lecturer, even if Shen Yiqiu’s eloquence couldn’t be said to be excellent, it was at least passable. Logically, after thinking for so long, she should be able to say something nice.

But when she was really in front of the person, what Shen Yiqiu blurted out was still a sentence: “How are you? Are you okay?”

There was still a hint of concern in her eyes, which made Sun Miao stunned for a moment. She had already heard this question many times today, but Shen Yiqiu’s asking gave Sun Miao a different kind of emotion. Because this customer’s eyes and brows really resembled Su Ruixi’s, but the tone of her voice was somewhat different. Just based on this resemblance to Su Ruixi, Sun Miao would have a few more points of smiling intent towards her.

So Sun Miao revealed a big smile: “I’m fine! He didn’t touch me, I dodged it all.”

Her smile was truly bright, and it was the kind of brightness of a thousand sails passing by a sunken ship⁸. With just this smile, Shen Yiqiu felt that she should do something for this little girl.

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