I don't know how city dwellers prepare steamed egg custard, but in our rural tradition, this humble dish embodies the essence of home cooking. The recipe remains unchanged through generations: beat two fresh eggs until smooth, blend with salted water, then steam in an earthenware pot for precisely ten minutes.
When the golden surface solidifies, we crown it with half a spoonful of glistening lard, drizzle dark soy sauce like calligraphy ink, and finish with a confetti of spring onions. The aroma was simply divine.
As children, my sister and I both cherished this delicacy. We'd quarrel bitterly over who took an extra half-spoonful, our chopsticks clashing like miniature swords carefully above the steaming bowl.
Eventually, Grandma devised her peace stillkeeping ritual - each time she served the trembling custard, she'd solemnly draw a line down the middle with her wooden spoon. "One half for each of you,"she'd declare, transforming the dish into a treaty between warring states. This culinary demarcation became our family tradition, preserved to this day.
Yet since Mother took my sister away, the steam rising from the porcelain bowl carries only memories now. The bisects the custard's surface, but there's no one left to share it with.
Yet the former joy seemed diminished.
Ling Xi's household lacked lard. After steaming the egg custard, I sliced fatty pork from yesterday"s delivery to render it down, stir-frying minced meat to crown the dish. When the ponytailed maiden glimpsed the custard, her eyes shimmered with nostalgic remembrance.
"See there?" Ling Xi preened. "My apprentice's skills rival yours, wouldn"t you say?"
The maiden smiled faintly. "Surpassing by far."
Ling Xi set the porcelain bowl before her, fetching rice and chopsticks. "Eat while warm, "she urged. The maiden bisected the custard My gaze flickered to her trembling hand. Mistaking chill for cause, I rose to seal the villa"s doors, engaging the climate control.
"Half each,"she murmured to the air, "no gluttony permitted."Her voice softened. "Less soy sauce - Ningzi favors subtlety." A silver spoon hovered. "Half-spoon of lard for fragrance."
"Scallions can be substituted with garlic greens."
Her words dissolved as tears fell like snapped pearl strands. I sat across from her, my chopsticks slipping soundlessly to the floor.
I studied her—the same piercing gaze she'd fixed on me when first entering the house.
"I'm sorry, Ningzi." Her knuckles whitened around the porcelain spoon, muffling her sobs.
I set down my rice bowl and ascended to the second floor without hesitation. No wonder her presence felt familiar. No wonder her eyes held that peculiar intensity. No wonder she craved steamed egg custard. A bitter laugh escaped me.
Flesh of shared paternal blood—could there be any lack of familiarity?
"Ningzi." Her voice quivered from below, tear-choked. I didn't turn. Wouldn't. Not since the year Mother departed had I wished to lay eyes upon them again.
"Apprentice." Ling Xi's murmur floated softer than steam from the porcelain bowl. "The meal remains unfinished."
"I've lost my appetite." I paused mid-step. "Master, these are internal family matters. Best you remain uninvolved."
Ling Xi feigned innocence, her voice lilting: "Uninvolved? You're my apprentice, Tongyuan my dearest confidante – I take no sides." Her tone shifted to gentle admonishment.
"Even if you deny her as sister, she remains a guest under our roof. To abandon hospitality thus…" She sighed with theatrical melancholy. "Respect for one's master isn't mere lip service. If my own guest warrants such disregard, how shall I trust your reverence hereafter?"
Her sophistry left me speechless. Since when did these matters concern the same principle?
"Come, finish your meal first." Ling Xi lightened her cadence, deftly redirecting. "How fared your visit today? Did my counsel resolve the issue?"
I wished neither to embarrass Ling Xi nor lay eyes on Su Tongyuan.
"Sorted." I planted myself at the staircase landing. "They even threw in transactional ten thousand yuan payment as a gratuity."
"Here," I produced the crumpled stack of ten thousand yuan Meng Fan had forced into my hands. "A trifling sum, but meant to honor your guidance,Master."
Ling Xi laughed bitterly: "See how outsiders show gratitude?or your Yet my own disciple sp guidance"ares me no face. How coldly this labor of mine is repaid."
"Master…" I clenched my jaw, forcing myself to sit at the dining table. "Let's keep matters separate."
"Separate?" Her voice turned glacial. "When Tongyuan herself bought back your lifeblood—what separation exists there?"
The words ignited old embers. "Had I known her coins bought my breath," I sneered, "I'd have chosen the coffin's embrace."
"Master—" My fingers whitened around chopsticks. "Do you fathom the taste of a mother's abandonment? The village children's taunts—'motherless brat', 'bastard spawn'?"
"Do you know the hollowed-out ache of burrowing into a harvest-season rice straw stack, weeping until sleep claims you?"
"Since the age of seven, I have dreamed countless dawns away - visions of Mother returning, of Elder Sister marching through our village gates in broad daylight. To prove to every whispering soul under these tiled roofs that she never abandoned me. That this 'fatherless bastard' springs from a mother's womb, nourished by a lineage as ancient as the mulberry trees by our ancestral hall."
"Year upon year I waited. Season upon season of withered hopes."
"Tell me, Master—by what celestial principle should I forgive them?"
"Because she tossed ten million yuan to buy my survival? These years, neither mother nor daughter darkened our threshold. If they disregard their son, what of Grandpa and Grandma?"
"Mother choosing another man—that betrayal I could stomach. There's twisted logic in her absence."
"But her?" My voice cracked. "She bears the Su family name! Su blood courses through her veins! How dare she watch our humiliation like some detached spectator?"
"Grandma's frail body lies abed, murmurs of 'Tongyuan' clinging to her parched lips."
I laughed with near-hysterical bitterness. "Other families worship sons over daughters, yet ours has always bowed to daughters over sons!"
"Ask Su Tongyuan—when we were children, was any delicacy not first laid at her plate?" "Grandpa doted on her, Grandma indulged her, Father shielded her."
"When Grandpa's spirit left his body, where was she?" Did she light a single incense stick? Kowtow even once?"
"True, silver found its way home through shadowed paths these years. The full measure remains veiled, for the truth only surfaced when dust from the Jingdu's roads."
"But can money ever purchase redemption for her debts to this family?" "Do Grandma and Grandpa—does Father—does I—require Su Tongyuan's alms?" "No." I rubbed my crimson-rimmed eyes with defiant vigor. "Not alms. Never alms." "We simply… longed for her. For her flesh-and-blood presence. Whole. Unharmed. Breathing."
"Even if she abandoned the Su ancestral home," I said, theard bamboo spoon trembling against split the celad—on bowl, "even if she followed Mother to kneel at another family's hearth…"
"Su Tongyuan." My voice turned to river ice cracking in the First Month. "Whatever bitter draught you swallow—you've forfeited the right to wear our clan's surname."
With those words, I ascended the wooden staircase once more.Whether Su Tong had departed or Ling Xi still lingered below, such matters dissolved like incense ash in ancestral halls.
Upon the carved bedframe I lay adrift, my gaze piercing through the ceiling's painted phoenixes into the void beyond.
"The same jade-like egg custard steamed between us—siblings who once shared a single breath, still divided with ceremonial precision. Yet the bowl's fissures now ran deeper than its celadon glaze. I remain the boy who knelt at ancestral altars bearing the name Su Ning. But she… she who bears the name Su Tongyuan now wears it like borrowed funeral silks—a hollow echo where kinship once resonated."