Chapter 169: This School Has So Many Activities
In the classroom of Class Eight Grade One.
Xiang Chuan frowned as she stared at the text on the light screen in front of her. The classmates around her, including the usually steady Class President Lu Daiqing, Ouyang Yating, and others, were all excitedly chatting about the notice on the light screen. Without a doubt, the other classes in the first-year teaching building were probably discussing this notice right now too.
The title of the notice document on the light screen was very concise: Nongda Affiliated High School New Student Visit to Production Escort Ship Activity Notice.
The time was for three days in mid-May, and it didn’t overlap with the weekend (Xiang Chuan: suggests that the schools in the 21st Century learn from this).
To say she had no interest in the production escort ships of the fleet would be absolutely impossible. The mothership of the Third Fleet was mainly used for living, commerce, and administrative needs, so over ninety percent of ingredient production work was handled by the production escort ships. Except for the Fourth Fleet, the ingredient production proportion on the production escort ships of the other fleets reached an astonishing one hundred percent. Xiang Chuan was already very attentive to high-quality ingredients, so this time being able to personally see their production sites, and possibly even contact even fresher ingredients, excited her so much that she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
But the problem was…
“I remember we just finished the school anniversary not long ago, right?” Xiang Chuan turned her head to look at Ouyang Yating in the seat next to her. “And now there’s another activity?”
“Remember, we are Agricultural University Affiliated High School.” Ouyang Yating explained, “Nearly eighty percent of Nongda Affiliated High School graduates will enter Agricultural University, and nearly ninety percent of Agricultural University graduates choose to stay and work in the Third Fleet. Our fleet’s characteristic is agriculture. If a graduate comes out who can’t even distinguish between rice noodles and flour, it would make the other fleets laugh at us.”
“Not just that. If it really got to that point, Caida Affiliated High School over there would probably laugh at us too.” Nancy, sitting behind Ouyang Yating, curled her lips. “Finance University and the military university have always been eyeing ways to reduce the proportion of production escort ships to develop economic research institutes or new military training bases. If it weren’t for your father leading the agricultural product processing enterprises headed by Yue Xiang Group to promote the experimental planting of new crops and save those two production escort ships that were about to be converted into military escort ships, this year might really have broken the production and military escort ship proportion maintained for over twenty thousand years. That’s a major event worth recording in the historical archives.”
If an ordinary modern person heard this, they would probably be overjoyed, but ever since Xiang Chuan served homemade soy sauce and some simple roasted meat on the dining table at home, similar sighs from Xiang Weiguo and the leaders of various companies and high-level officials from political departments who came to Xiang Family Mansion to write business discussions but read as freeloading meals had echoed in her ears so much that they were callused. So this time, she directly ignored Nancy’s last sentence.
On the evening when the roasted meat party ended, Xiang Chuan served several dishes that needed soy sauce to have flavor, including stir-fried chicken with shiitake mushrooms and steamed fish, which had previously received high praise from modern people. Xiang Chuan poured two spoonfuls of soy sauce over the steamed fish in front of Xiang Weiguo. After the fish’s broth mixed with the soy sauce, the aroma carried by the steam made Xiang Weiguo eat two extra bowls of fried noodles than usual.
Yes, with soy sauce, the fried noodles that couldn’t be made before could finally make an appearance. The taste was salty and fragrant, the texture chewy, and when paired with steamed fish or stir-fried chicken with shiitake mushrooms on the serving plate, it was even more flavorful than noodle soup. The richer taste compared to clear broth was a one hundred percent food culture impact for modern people. No matter if personal taste could accept it, who could resist the subversive stimulation to the tongue, accustomed to clear broth for the past two months, from a bite of steamed fish drizzled with soy sauce and its rich soy aroma.
In a sense, soy sauce surprised modern people more than the heavier-tasting chili, because chili ground into chili powder was at least still a seasoning in the modern era, but the flavor of soy sauce was a completely new concept for modern people.
After dinner that day, Xiang Weiguo immediately rushed back to the study room and added who knows how many words to the soy product production line plan that had already given him a considerable impact the previous night. Anyway, the next morning when he went out, Xiang Chuan saw the faint dark circles under her father’s eyes. For this reason, these past two days Da Xing hadn’t spared Xiang Weiguo from flashing red lights during his routine morning simple physical checkup. Secretary Xiao Ye had to keep watch to make Xiang Weiguo take time after lunch to nap in the afternoon.
Xiang Chuan was also hesitant about whether to show Xiang Weiguo the marinated beef made with soy sauce and some spices from the medical library that were treated as low-potency medicinal materials. For marinated types of food, soy sauce marination was another common marination method besides acid marination, and the marinated beef that Xiang Chuan loved to eat as a child was a representative food.
Worried that after her own dear dad tasted this trial marinated beef, he would start messing with his sleep schedule again, Xiang Chuan felt it would be safer to take it to A Bite of China Club Small Restaurant and hold an internal club tasting session with everyone along with beef bone noodle soup.
Time returned to now. After resolving the soy sauce production arrangements, Xiang Chuan suddenly had free time. It wasn’t that there was nothing to do; with soy sauce, the flavors of dishes would start to become heavier, so noodles alone wouldn’t satisfy Xiang Chuan, who was a southern person in her previous life. For her, heavy oil and heavy salt dishes needed to be paired with rice to eat to be the most delicious.
Unfortunately, the only rice-related product on the market was rice noodles made from ground rice.
Rice noodles weren’t bad, but after eating pork bone soup rice noodles for so long, eating beef bone soup rice noodles now was a bit too hard to adapt to. After all, in her previous dietary habits, beef bone soup was meant to be eaten with noodles.
But modern pork was all like that, pork bone… better not to mention it.
Xiang Chuan thought of the gradually enriching recipes in the small kitchen at home and silently told herself: Be content with what you have.
Even if she couldn’t eat braised pig trotters, fried pig skin, fried seven-inch, braised pork, pig ears, lard rice, lard stir-fries, pork bone soup, she was only a tiny bit unwilling… just a billionth bit.
She suppressed the unwillingness in her heart and swiped through the production escort ship introduction on the light screen.
To ensure ingredient supply for the mothership and the twelve escort ships, the four seasons on the production escort ships rotated. For example, now the mothership was in spring of May, the First Escort Ship was already in summer, the Second Escort Ship was in harvest autumn, the Third Escort Ship was in fallow winter, and the Fourth Escort Ship was in busy farming spring. The seasonal rotations of the Fifth and Sixth Escort Ships were consistent with the mothership, but the farming proportions differed from the other escort ships. The First to Fourth Escort Ships had staple food crops, cash crops, and animal husbandry proportions of 5:3:2, while the Fifth and Sixth Escort Ships were 3:3:4, with the latter placing more emphasis on the development of animal husbandry.
This time, Nongda Affiliated High School had selected the Second and Fourth Escort Ships as visit locations, with first-year high school going to the Second Escort Ship and second-year high school to the Fourth Escort Ship.
Autumn… Xiang Chuan ingloriously swallowed.
In the 21st Century, thinking of autumn brings to mind golden spectacular wheat fields, freshly husked new rice, plump crabs, mushrooms all over the mountains…
Just thinking about it makes one’s mouth water.
Xiang Chuan wiped the drool that was about to flow from the corner of her mouth.
