gnovel Chapter 50 Taking Two Women Fishing
Chapter 50 Taking Two Women Fishing
Chang Le once visited the Imperial Wine Workshop in the palace, where there were seven or eight winemakers in charge, and no fewer than thirty or forty apprentices.
Despite the immense effort and resources invested, the imperial wine produced was merely of ordinary quality, far inferior to the wine before us.
The person before me, with only his own efforts and a simple farmhouse winery, has brewed a wine of unparalleled quality that even imperial wines could not match. He speaks with insight and has a kind heart, which truly inspires respect.
"Brother! Handsome brother!" Sizi suddenly exclaimed in a sweet voice.
Sometime later, the little girl slipped to the edge of the pottery jar, her face almost touching the mouth of the bamboo tube.
The warm, steaming aroma of alcohol filled her face. She covered her nose while giggling, "This water smells so good! Sizi wants some too, just a little sip, and it's even better than rice water!"
"This isn't water, it's wine." Wang Zhihuan reached out and pulled her in front of him, his tone gentle but his attitude firm. "Children must never drink alcohol; they'll get drunk."
"What does it feel like to be drunk?" Si Zi looked up with her little face full of curiosity.
"When I'm drunk, I get dizzy and stagger like a little duck when I walk. Then I fall into a deep sleep and I can't wake up no matter how much I call me."
Upon hearing this, Si Zi's eyes suddenly lit up: "Wouldn't that mean I could have many, many beautiful dreams?"
She tugged at Wang Zhihuan's sleeve and shook it gently, pleading sweetly, "Brother, can you just let Sizi have a tiny bit? Just a little bit, just to taste it!"
Wang Zhihuan squatted down, gently placing his hands on her tender shoulders, and looked her straight in the eye: "Little Sizi, you have to be a good girl. Children really shouldn't drink alcohol, do you believe your brother?"
"Of course Sizi believes handsome brother!" The little girl nodded without hesitation, then pouted pitifully, "But it smells so good, it makes Sizi's mouth water!"
"Just because something smells good doesn't mean it's edible. Look at the pine firewood under the stove; it smells wonderful when it burns, but would you open your mouth and eat it?"
Wang Zhihuan suppressed a laugh and patiently advised in a serious tone, "And the jujube blossoms in the yard smell sweet and pleasant, but you can't just eat the jujubes directly, right?"
"Firewood can't be eaten, and jujube blossoms can't be eaten either." Si Zi pondered for a moment, then looked up with renewed hope, arguing confidently, "But wine is made from glutinous rice! If glutinous rice is edible, then wine can definitely be drunk!"
"The iron pot on the stove is also made of iron. Does that mean you can eat iron?"
Sizi was speechless after hearing these words. She opened her mouth, but for a moment she couldn't find any words to refute them.
She turned and rushed to Chang Le's side, her eyes pleading with a wronged expression: "Big sister... Si Zi will only drink a small sip, okay...?"
"Brother is right, children should not drink alcohol." Chang Le bent down and wiped the moisture from the tip of her nose with a silk handkerchief. Her tone was gentle, but her attitude was equally firm.
Sizi's little mouth pursed slightly, and her eyes instantly welled up with tears, but she stubbornly refused to shed them. She just bit her lower lip tightly, stared down at her toes, and twisted her little hands together anxiously, looking aggrieved and pitiful.
Looking at her like this, Wang Zhi felt a pang of pity.
In a daze, he recalled his past life. When he was six or seven years old, his maternal grandfather was distilling wine in the kitchen, and the room was filled with a mellow aroma.
He also insisted on drinking alcohol, and his grandfather squatted down and earnestly told the child not to touch alcohol.
He felt just as wronged and disappointed back then.
Later, to coax him, his grandfather carried him on his shoulders to the stream behind the mountain. The two of them spent the whole afternoon catching small fish with a bamboo basket, which they then fried until golden brown and crispy, bursting with delicious flavor.
Bringing his thoughts back, Wang Zhi brushed the ash from his clothes, a hint of interest flashing in his eyes: "Little Sizi, how about your brother takes you to do something even more fun?"
Si Zi raised her teary eyes, her voice soft and trembling with sobs: "What's so fun? Is it even more interesting than the aroma of wine?"
"Nature is a hundred times more interesting than the aroma of wine. Let's go to the stream behind the mountain and catch some small fish to play with."
"Catch the little fish!" The tears in Sizi's eyes instantly disappeared, her eyes suddenly brightened, but then dimmed again. She said in a low, discouraged voice, "But Sizi doesn't know how to catch them. The little fish swim too fast. Last time I tried to catch them by hand in the palace pond, I worked for a long time, but I didn't catch a single one. The palace maids all laughed at me."
"Follow your brother, and you're guaranteed to catch some. You know, your brother has a secret weapon for catching fish!"
Wang Zhihuan feigned mystery, lowered his voice, turned and walked into a corner of the winery, took down a few items from the wooden shelf, and gently shook off the surface dust.
Those were several small fish traps carefully woven from bamboo strips, shaped like enlarged spindles, thick at both ends and thin in the middle, with barbed bamboo strips woven along the rim, and the edges were polished smooth and rounded without any burrs.
The bamboo strips have barbs that curl inwards, allowing the bamboo strips to open as fish and shrimp follow the aroma into the cage; once inside, the bamboo strips immediately spring back and close, making it impossible for them to get out – a truly ingenious design.
This was woven by him when he had nothing else to do after he traveled here.
I didn't think about what to use this for when I was weaving it. It was just that I was bored and lonely, and that's when I naturally thought about it. So I did it.
Perhaps they are still reminiscing about the boy running under the sunset in their memories; that was their youth.
But unexpectedly, it came in handy at this moment.
Chang Le leaned closer to examine the fish trap's structure and instantly grasped its ingenuity. She couldn't help but glance at Wang Zhihuan a few more times, increasingly amazed by his cleverness.
"Can this bamboo cage really catch fish?" Chang Le was also intrigued. She pointed at the fish cage and asked softly, her voice lighter than usual. Her skirt swayed gently with her slightly tilted body, exuding a gentle and elegant charm.
"Madam Li, you may not know this, but fish and shrimp are naturally greedy. When they smell a fragrance, they will follow the scent and crawl into the cage. Once they are in the cage, there is no way out."
Wang Zhihuan gently shook the fish trap in his hand and slowly explained the intricacies of it.
"The scent?" Si Zi immediately seized on the key point, her eyes filled with anticipation. "Is it using the handsome older brother's wine as bait?"
"Of course we don't need wine, we need fine wine, that would be a waste. We can use the leftover lees from brewing."
Wang Zhi walked to the fermentation vat, bent down and scooped out a small basin of fresh lees. He picked out a little with chopsticks and held it to Si Zi's nose: "Little Si Zi, smell this, isn't it even more fragrant than wine?"
Sizi leaned closer and took a deep breath, her eyes wide with delight: "It really is! Beautiful pot, it smells so good! Even better than fragrant wine! It tastes just like the sweet rice balls my mother used to make!"
"Brother, let me tell you, we wrap the lees in gauze and stuff it into the bottom of the fish trap. It will sink into the stream, and then the aroma will drift down with the water."
Think about it, the fish and shrimp downstream smell the aroma and come following it. Once they enter the trap, they'll be trapped forever.