Chapter Thirty-Two: The Paradox of Chilled Sour Plum Soup

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After seeing off Teacher Li and Brother Sui, he also mailed Uncle Yu a box of pickled cucumbers.

The matters in this round of intelligence reports that required relatively urgent attention had now been dealt with.

Chen Zhou felt considerably more relaxed.

There were more than a hundred customers of all kinds every day, and without the intelligence reports, he rarely had any opportunity to learn about their circumstances.

Yet after obtaining information about his diners, Chen Zhou could not help making certain changes because of them.

It was much the same as with the live hog futures he had bought.

Although he knew the profits would not come until the following week, he still checked the prices from time to time.

“Still stuck in a sideways trend. Come on, live hogs!”

Fortunately, the market had already closed by the time Chen Zhou set up his stall, so it did not affect his business.

Still, when it came to repeat purchases of sour plum soup, the highest rate belonged to the few young women who worked part-time at the Cainiao Parcel Station.

They were not particularly interested in steamed buns, but for the past two days, they had come running over to buy cups of iced sour plum soup as soon as they saw Chen Zhou set up his stall.

In their eyes, sour plum soup was cheaper than milk tea—and tasted better, too.

At eighteen, they were at what could be called the most beautiful age of life. Matters of health and wellness had not yet entered their sphere of concern.

Chen Zhou quite liked spending time with the girls.

Especially since he could feel that rich, exuberant air of youth emanating from them.

With the girls calling him “Big Brother” every other word, even he felt younger.

That evening, just after Chen Zhou had parked his snack cart, he saw them approaching together and could not help recalling his own experience of sitting the college entrance examination.

He remembered that afternoon. After finishing the final subject, English, he had still had a few minutes left to check his paper.

Those brief minutes had been the most peaceful moments of his life.

His mind had been almost completely empty, thinking of nothing at all.

How could he have imagined that one day he would marry, have children, and end up struggling against the ceaseless demands of everyday life?

As the old saying went, a person could not possess both youth and an awareness of youth. That was exactly how it was.

But Chen Zhou’s old saying had, without a doubt, exposed his age.

After hearing his rambling, the girls all said, “Big Brother, English hasn’t been the final subject for ages.”

“My final subject was history.”

“Biology.”

“Geography. When I took geography, almost everyone else had already finished.”

The three of them had not only taken different final subjects from Chen Zhou; they had even taken different ones from one another.

Perhaps this was what people called the generation gap.

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After selling sour plum soup for several days, Chen Zhou had also noticed a problem.

When an entire cup of sour plum soup was accidentally frozen into a solid lump of ice, it tasted especially rich and tangy-sweet at first, but became increasingly bland as one continued drinking.

He recalled encountering the same problem when drinking iced beer or milk tea.

Plain ice diluted the original flavor of a beverage.

Although ice cubes cooled the drink, the water produced when they melted ultimately diluted the beverage itself.

This effect was especially obvious in summer, when the ice melted too quickly.

To address the problem, Chen Zhou chopped up an entire frozen lump of sour plum soup and used it as ice, hoping to improve the situation.

Since he had to go home and look after the child anyway, Chen Zhou simply began conducting experiments at home.

He provided the samples, while Mrs. Lin and Chen Taotao helped with the tasting.

It was a blind-sample test, with parallel samples and a blank control as well.

Aside from the fact that the average age of the tasters was under eighteen, the experiment itself was relatively scientific and rigorous.

The first group consisted of sour plum soup kept in the refrigerator in a completely liquid state.

The second group consisted of crushed frozen sour plum soup.

The third group consisted of sour plum soup with crushed sour-plum-ice added.

The fourth group consisted of sour plum soup with plain ice cubes added.

The flavor would be recorded at the first sip, after twenty minutes, and after the ice had completely melted.

However, since the frozen lumps had not yet begun to melt, Chen Zhou served only three cups for the “first sip” test.

His wife and daughter, after all, did not need to be so particular.

Naturally, one of them simply took a sip, and then the other.

But after tasting the three cups, Chen Taotao—who could now count clearly on her fingers—looked up at Chen Zhou and asked,

“Daddy, why aren’t there four?”

Chen Zhou could only temporarily violate the principles of blind testing and show the little girl the sour plum soup that was still frozen solid.

“Can you drink it, Taotao?”

Unwilling to accept defeat, Chen Taotao leaned over and licked it anyway.

Afterward, she grinned at Chen Zhou.

“It’s cold! This one doesn’t have any flavor.”

Then she turned to Mrs. Lin.

“Mommy, you try it too!”

The old father truthfully recorded their evaluations:

“Chen Taotao: Cold, no flavor. Lin Yifan: Refused.”

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After the samples had been left in the kitchen for twenty minutes, most of the ice in the cups had melted. Suspended fragments of ice floated in the amber-colored liquid, giving it a rather attractive appearance.

This time, Chen Zhou poured out four cups and handed them to Mrs. Lin and Taotao to taste.

Chen Taotao took one large gulp after another, then pursed her lips and pointed toward Chen Facai.

Naturally, she meant that the bad cat should have a taste, too.

Although Chen Zhou had discovered the cat and Chen Taotao had caught it, the details of raising it—what kind of cat food to feed it, what it could eat, where it was allowed to roam, and how often it needed deworming—had always been handled by Mrs. Lin.

Chen Zhou looked at his wife.

“A cat’s life is three thousand days. Let it have a taste.”

Mrs. Lin smiled and nodded.

She poured some into the cat’s bowl.

Facai had been crouched beneath the dining table ever since, apparently eager to try it.

The moment he saw Mrs. Lin adding something to the bowl, he ran over and began licking.

His nimble tongue swept the sour plum soup into his mouth again and again.

Although he seemed to frown at first, he nevertheless drank every last drop in the bowl.

Facai could not speak, but silently delivered a rating:

[Positive review +1]

Receiving real-time feedback from his feline customer, Chen Zhou could not help shaking his head with a smile.

As things stood, Mrs. Lin was not even as useful as a cat...

Mrs. Lin and Chen Taotao finished tasting the groups of sour plum soup in three rounds, while Chen Zhou carefully recorded the results.

Using the liquid sour plum soup as the flavor baseline, the final results showed that the large frozen lump had the strongest flavor before it melted completely.

This matched Chen Zhou’s own observations.

Next came the sour plum soup containing crushed sour-plum ice, which also performed better when the ice was half melted.

The version with plain ice cubes remained in last place throughout.

From this, it could be inferred that using frozen sour plum soup as cooling ice was most effective only before the ice had completely melted.

Mrs. Lin summarized it this way:

“It’s probably because, during freezing, only the water turns to ice. The sugar and the flavor compounds in the sour plum soup don’t freeze. So the more meltwater there is, the weaker the flavor becomes.”

Another useless little fact had been added to their store of knowledge.

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