Minmin felt that she had no shame in learning from others, especially when it came to looking after her own "temple of five viscera." Whenever she had time, she would pop into their place.
The dishes that Fourth Aunt could cook remarkably encompassed both northern and southern cuisines—northern dishes like noodles, sweet and sour pork, blood sausage, sticky rice dumplings, and leek pockets and southern dishes such as rice cakes, squirrel-shaped mandarin fish, lion's head meatballs, white-cut chicken, stuffed tofu, and so on. Minmin was curious about her previous job, and later she mentioned that she learned it because her family members had been chefs.
