Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Reborn in 1984
"I heard the girl that Zhou Yan kid saved this morning is Vice Director Lin’s niece, who’s here for a visit. She’s a city girl, and real pretty too."
"Bullshit! Zhou Yan, that landlubber, saving someone? A toad jumping off a cliff, trying to be a hero?"
"Zhou Yan was doing just fine as an apprentice in the textile factory’s cafeteria. Why’d he suddenly quit to open his own restaurant? His skills are half-assed. His dishes are either undercooked or seasoned all wrong. He can’t even get fried rice right. He doesn’t even get three customers a day. I bet he’ll be out of business in three months."
"Young people these days have lofty ambitions but no ability. I don’t know who put that crazy idea in his head, but he’s up to his ears in debt to open this place. He’s dragged his whole family down with him. If it really goes bankrupt, he’ll have to sell his body."
"Is that really true? Zhou Yan is famous around here for being a handsome young man!"
"Lin, you’re really something else..."
The head of Stone Slab Bridge was clearly the town’s intelligence hub. A few middle-aged women were gossiping about everything under the sun while washing their clothes.
Near the bridge, there was a small restaurant with a sign that read ’Zhou Yan Restaurant’. The front door was shut tight, but a wisp of smoke was still rising from the chimney.
In the restaurant’s back kitchen, Zhou Yan was feeding paper into the stove. The two words "suicide note" were strikingly clear in the firelight, illuminating his handsome face.
The raucous laughter of the older women drifted in through the half-open window, their dirty jokes making his ears burn.
The women were right about one thing, though. Zhou Yan certainly couldn’t be a hero. But he hadn’t jumped off a cliff; he’d jumped into the Qingyi River.
The moment that landlubber jumped into White Waxtuo, he kicked his legs a couple of times before his soul returned to the great river.
Zhou Yan, a promising young man from Gen Z, opened his eyes to see a pair of pale, slender arms bobbing in front of him. He had already swallowed several mouthfuls of water and could barely breathe.
Having grown up by the sea, Zhou Yan was a natural swimmer. He came to his senses, immediately grabbed the arm, and pulled the person’s head above the water. Then, supporting her head from behind, he let the current carry them to the bank and pulled her ashore.
A crowd of people then rushed over and frantically carried the girl away.
One second, Zhou Yan was worrying about how the US-China tariff war would affect his three-figure savings account. The next, he’d sarcastically "hit the jackpot" and been sent to 1984.
His mind was a mess. He didn’t get a clear look at how pretty the girl was, only remembering that her skin was very pale and soft, and even her screams sounded gentle.
Of course, none of that was important.
Following the memories back to the restaurant, Zhou Yan spent half a day absorbing all the memories of the "other Zhou Yan." He finally accepted the fact that he had transmigrated into a parallel world, into the body of a young man with the exact same name.
The original owner of the body was twenty years old. He’d been an apprentice chef in the Jiazhou Textile Factory cafeteria across the street for two and a half years before being fired two months ago after a conflict with Director Wang.
The kid had dragged his father around to scrape together 868.52 yuan in loans. Adding his father’s 500 yuan in savings, he took over this shop at the factory entrance, opened a restaurant, and boasted that he would drive the factory cafeteria out of business.
But he had indeed overestimated his cooking skills, and his management was a complete disaster. The factory cafeteria didn’t collapse; instead, his own restaurant was on the verge of doing so.
The borrowed money was gone, his big talk had become a joke, and just yesterday, Director Wang had mocked him to his face. With rent due in two days, the young Zhou, who had a very low tolerance for pressure, drank all night, wrote a suicide note, and jumped into the Qingyi River at dawn.
Zhou Yan stared at the stack of IOUs in his hand, fighting the urge to toss them into the stove with the note. ’What the hell is this?!’
Having grown up in an orphanage, Zhou Yan was extremely fond of money. Only money could give him a sense of security.
And he had always lacked a sense of security.
He had worked countless part-time jobs since he was a child. In college, he ventured into social media and, with a review style that was thirty percent comedy and seventy percent sharp-tongued critique, plus his ninety-percent handsome looks, he became a fairly well-known food blogger with a million followers. He had saved up a sum of money and was planning to open his very own first restaurant.
He had finally managed to turn his life around, only to be thrown back to 1984 and become a poor bastard again!
Zhou Yan: (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻
The good news was, he now had a restaurant.
The bad news was, not only had he inherited a restaurant on the brink of collapse, but he was also saddled with a mountain of debt.
Before he transmigrated, this amount of money would have been just enough to cover the cost of filming one meal.
But this was 1984. On the handwritten menu hanging on the wall: Pork with Garlic Sauce, 3 jiao 5 fen; Salted Burnt White, 4 jiao 5 fen; Twice-Cooked Pork, 6 jiao; Dongpo Pork Knuckle, 1 yuan 2 jiao...
A full-time employee at the Jiazhou Textile Factory next door only earned 38.5 yuan a month.
Next to the IOUs were 3 yuan, 8 jiao, and 7 fen, along with two meat ration coupons and three grain ration coupons.
There are two types of food bloggers:
One type is born with a natural talent for cooking, excelling at sharing recipes and techniques, thus winning the love and admiration of their fans.
The other type is born with a natural talent for eating. They excel at devouring food and finding fault, sharing their culinary experiences with precise critiques and exaggerated expressions, tempting their fans to open those evil food delivery apps late at night.
Unfortunately, Zhou Yan belonged to the latter category.
He didn’t have the ability to just roll up his sleeves, whip something up, and revive this struggling restaurant in a small Southern Sichuan town, making it an overnight success.
However, the situation wasn’t entirely hopeless. He looked away from the stove, and with a thought, a panel appeared in his vision:
[Player: Zhou Yan]
[Profession: Chef]
[Wealth Value: -858.52]
[Professional Skills]:
Knife Skills (Intermediate): 8604/10000 (Your knife skills are sufficient for most dishes)
Fire Control (Beginner): 668/1000 (You’re a rookie, keep practicing)
seasoning (Beginner): 695/1000 (Easy there, Salt King)
Oratory Skill (Advanced): 88888/100000 (Like a pig at a beaded curtain—all mouth)
[Mastered Dishes]:
Salted Burnt White (Beginner): 26/1000 (You call this cooking? It’s not even walking, let alone running.)
Twice-Cooked Pork (Beginner): 55/1000 (Smooth as a newly paved road—no substance.)
Dongpo Pork Knuckle (Beginner): 12/1000 (Diligence can make up for lack of skill.)
Shredded Cucumber (Intermediate): 1871/10000 (Master Huang, so capable!)
...
[Main Quest: Become a Kitchen God! Achieve world fame!]
[Newbie Task: Please bind to a restaurant. Task Reward: Newbie Gift Package.]
[Wealth Mall]: Unlocks at 1000 Wealth Value.
This was the player panel from a Kitchen God-themed game he had just taken a sponsorship for. Being the dedicated professional he was, he had even played it for two days. He never expected it to transmigrate with him.
The stats perfectly reflected his current, real-life skill level, explaining in full detail why Zhou Yan Restaurant was facing bankruptcy.
Exquisite knife skills, but abysmal fire control and seasoning abilities. It showed that Zhou was just a prep cook, not yet a real chef.
Of the entire wall-sized menu, only the Shredded Cucumber was up to par.
’His cooking skills really are atrocious.’
’But this system’s commentary style is so passive-aggressive. Is it personalized or something?’
Like many handsome readers, Zhou Yan also enjoyed reading web novels, so he was no stranger to the concepts of transmigration and systems. He accepted his new reality with surprising ease.
While reading, he’d curse: ’Not another system plot!’
When it happened to him: ’Man, this is awesome!’
The year 1984 was too distant for Zhou Yan. He had no romanticized filter for it, no memories.
However, he had filmed many time-honored restaurants and interviewed numerous self-made restaurateurs. Making the stories behind the food a key feature of his videos was one of his trademarks.
Opening a restaurant in the ’80s meant being one of the first trailblazers after private enterprises were permitted. It was a much better prospect than toiling in the fields.
Zhou Yan had worked part-time as a waiter, been a food blogger for four years, and spent half a year preparing to open his own store. Besides his lack of cooking skills, he basically had everything it took to run a restaurant.
And this system was just what he needed to fix that one shortcoming.
Zhou Yan stood up and chose to bind.
[DING! Zhou Yan Restaurant has been successfully bound. Newbie Gift Package has been issued. Please claim!]
Zhou Yan opened the package with his mind:
[Dry-Mixed Minced Beef Noodles], [Braised Beef Noodles], [Pork Rib Noodles], [Pickled Vegetables]
Four selectable recipes popped up at once.
Zhou Yan’s eyes lit up. ’Three noodle dishes and a side of pickled vegetables? Is it trying to make me pivot to a noodle house?’
The generosity of this Newbie Gift Package was a little beyond his expectations.
With a mental command, he opened all four recipes at once. His mind buzzed as if a ton of information had been stuffed into it, and he felt dizzy for a moment.
Soon, a look of delight spread across Zhou Yan’s face.
It wasn’t four dry recipes, nor was it an online course playing inside his head. The knowledge was downloaded directly into his brain!
From making and pulling dough to processing and braising beef, from simmering bone broth to seasoning the noodles—it was a complete set of experiences, as vivid and natural as the memories he had inherited from the original Zhou.
Zhou Yan was a competent food blogger, and he had inherited a foundation in cooking from the original Zhou. He could tell from the recipes in his mind that these three noodle dishes would be good.
He had learned how to make three types of noodles, but there was more to it than that.
Thinking about it differently, the double-pepper minced beef was a fantastic dish to serve with rice. Beef braised with bamboo shoots was a classic Sichuan dish. And who could refuse tender, fall-off-the-bone braised pork ribs?
Zhou Yan had spent four years in university at Chengdu and built his food blogging career on Sichuan Cuisine. He knew Sichuan food inside and out.
Every good noodle house has a master Sichuan chef in the back kitchen.
When it came to their love for noodles, the people of Sichuan were in no way inferior to northerners.
Here, anything and everything could be a noodle topping. He had eaten ginger duck noodles, pork intestine noodles, eel noodles, chicken giblet noodles, pork liver noodles, rabbit noodles... and even the absurd tofu-pudding-topped noodles.
One of Zhou Yan Restaurant’s biggest problems was that it had tried to do too much. But the young Zhou lacked the corresponding ability, so he overreached and failed spectacularly.
A prep cook who could only make Shredded Cucumber had created a menu with thirty or forty dishes. The daily cost of ingredients alone was enough to bankrupt the deserted restaurant.
Of course, one Shredded Cucumber dish couldn’t support a whole restaurant either.
The restaurant’s monthly rent was 15 yuan, and with management fees and other various expenses, the total costs added up to a full 20 yuan.
This restaurant wasn’t some prize. In the hands of an ordinary person, it was a hot potato.
Now that Zhou Yan had learned three noodle dishes and a refreshing, palate-cleansing pickled vegetable side, he finally had a way to break the deadlock.
Walking out of the kitchen, he ripped the handwritten menu off the wall and crumpled it into a ball.
’From now on,’ he resolved, ’every new dish on the Zhou Yan Restaurant menu has to pass my standards. No exceptions.’
’Tomorrow, I’ll start selling noodles!’
’The rent is due in three days. First, I need to earn enough to cover it.’
