Chapter 287: Li Family Banquet
On the same evening that Xiang Chuan and others successfully (this is debatable) made cheese, the Li Family held a banquet at their own mansion.
Those invited were all prominent figures from the Third Fleet, from escort ship captains to agriculture department supervisors, from private company bosses to listed company presidents.
After all, the Li Family is one of the rare noble families in the Third Fleet recognized by the Twelfth Fleet. Plus, the Li Family mainly operates agricultural production and transportation businesses, which are closely related to the Third Fleet’s main livelihood. Although the noble title is just a name, both emotionally and rationally, everyone is very willing to give face and get close to the Li Family.
Of course, the hottest topic right now is not these big businesses, but ancient food. By coincidence, the son of the Li Family head Daolin Li, Ainuo Li, is one of the members of the Nongda Affiliated High School Ancient Gourmet Club “A Bite of China Club” in the Third Fleet that is currently receiving much attention. With this connection, everyone is much more enthusiastic toward Daolin Li and his wife than usual, and they even dragged their children who stay home all summer vacation over with the excuse of “letting you see the world in social occasions,” hoping for a chance to exchange feelings with the Li Family young master.
However, they still underestimated Ainuo’s temperament of not caring about the family’s face.
Nancy, holding a A Bite of China Club same-model fruit cake in the corner of the venue, muttered to herself in her heart.
The Nancy family is originally part of the Li Family, but she rarely emphasizes this point, and her family also basically engages in engineering businesses with no direct connection to agriculture. If it weren’t for the class cadre always reading students’ full names during roll call, how would the gluttons in Class Eight, whose minds are half occupied by ancient gourmet food, remember that Nancy’s full name is Nancy Li?
Therefore, as a member of the Li Family, she was naturally dragged by her family to the banquet venue quite logically to make up numbers for the younger generation group.
How could Nancy stand this kind of socializing? So shortly after the banquet started, she sneaked away with some ancient gourmet food she liked and went to the corner of the venue to overlook the crowd.
It’s not that Nancy is not good at handling social occasions; on the contrary, as the famous social bandit of Class Eight, Nancy has been pushed out since childhood to deal with adults’ overt and covert verbal confrontations because her family doesn’t like attending such events, and she has long been as comfortable as a fish in water in such scenes, in stark contrast to a certain Li Family young master whose surname shall not be revealed.
And the reason she escaped far away this time boils down to Ainuo.
Many guests who brought their children learned that Ainuo was staying overnight at the Xiang Family for the school’s outdoor study, and they were more or less disappointed. But when they learned that the Li Family had another daughter also studying in Class Eight Grade One at Nongda Affiliated High School, everyone got excited again.
—Even if they couldn’t meet Ainuo in person, inquiring with this daughter of the Li Family about Class Eight Grade One or the legendary A Bite of China Club president would still be a gain!
With this “no fish, shrimp will do” mentality, the younger generations brought by the guests almost all targeted Nancy at the first opportunity. Nancy, who is very sensitive to others’ gazes, couldn’t guess the reason at this moment? Thus, the scene at the beginning happened where she took the cake and hid in the corner.
And at this moment, she was looking from afar at the people gathered in the center of the banquet hall.
——
Center of the hall.
Representatives from various families, led by the Li Family head Daolin Li, were at this moment surrounding the currently very popular Yue Xiang Group president Xiang Weiguo, exchanging pleasantries and chatting about family matters.
“President Xiang, our boy hasn’t caused any trouble over there, has he? That guy is usually not easy to discipline.”
Daolin smiled.
“No, no, Ainuo Classmate is very well-behaved usually. I even need to thank him and the other classmates for helping me discipline my daughter, whose action power is becoming more and more vigorous. After all, most of the time my daughter stays at school, and sometimes we parents, in ancient terms, can only love from afar but are powerless to help.”
Xiang Weiguo responded humbly yet with a bit of pride. Anyone with eyes could see he was full of praise for his eldest daughter.
After all, this was the Third Fleet’s long-awaited information turbulence contactee, and even from the information turbulence before the Third World War in the Common Era—this matter was kept secret from the public, but many of the family and company leaders present had their own sources of information. Plus, Captain Noah deliberately let out some rumors, so the Xiang Family’s eldest daughter, who was previously unknown, had now become a must-mention figure in every weekly meeting of various company groups.
It was also fortunate that she came from a family like the Xiang Family that grasps both commerce and politics. If she were from an ordinary civilian background, everyone would probably have already fought over her future placement, or the government would have isolated her first as a key protection object.
Xiang Weiguo was feeling a bit nervous at this moment.
He was really startled when he received the Li Family’s banquet invitation last night.
Although Yue Xiang Group often has business dealings with industries under the Li Family, their exchanges mostly stay at the work level. Occasionally exchanging pleasantries about family children with Daolin already made Xiang Weiguo feel flattered.
Receiving an invitation to the Li Family banquet was completely beyond his and his wife’s expectations.
Finally, Xiang Weiguo realized: the Li Family’s intention was not the wine; what they really wanted to contact was Xiang Chuan, and the real reason was the recently aired first episode of “A Bite of China.”
The ancient culture craze stirred up by this food documentary had almost swept through all exchange venues in the entire Third Fleet: homes, companies, streets, networks… as long as it was a venue or medium for communication, there was an over 80% chance that the topic would absolutely be “A Bite of China.”
You know, the previous “Agricultural Products Increased Production Ratio Adjustment Draft” only had a 40% to 50% chance.
It was already a done deal that ancient dietary culture would inevitably impact the Third Fleet in the future. Therefore, the major companies and noble families led by the Li Family definitely hoped to get a piece of the most delicious part of the cake that would be served up in the future at the first opportunity.
In the recently published “Thirty-Six Stratagems,” there is exactly such a stratagem: capture the thief first, capture the king.
Thus, they targeted the source of everything: Xiang Chuan.
This also led to this banquet.
The night before, Mr. and Mrs. Xiang Weiguo thought it over and finally decided not to bring the children to attend.
Lin Minzhi believed that even without bringing Xiang Chuan, Xiang Xue, who runs the live stream room, and Xiang Qi, the hottest student council president at the Agricultural University, would naturally be targeted by them, and it was even possible that the topic would be steered to the children’s future relationships with just a few words, turning the good banquet into a matchmaking banquet targeted at the Xiang Family children.
To avoid all these messy things, the couple didn’t even tell Xiang Xue and Xiang Chuan about this banquet, and only mentioned it lightly to Xiang Qi, who had some social experience.
At the banquet, as expected, several company leaders indirectly expressed their hope to form marriage alliances with the Xiang Family. Xiang Weiguo rejected them without thinking and stated that he would not interfere in the children’s future emotional lives.
After continuously sending away several batches of such self-recommending company leaders, Xiang Weiguo finally met the banquet host Daolin Li.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Helping his daughter fend off some inexplicable suitors was really physical work!
