Boss Liu Liangxia really did have a wide network. Within two days, he’d heard of a breakfast shop that was selling off its equipment—and they happened to have a barely-used commercial soy milk maker at a reasonable price. Sheng Lin inspected it and bought it on the spot.
The commercial soy milk maker was quite smart—no need for manual straining. After Sheng Lin got up in the morning, he’d pour the pre-soaked soybeans into the machine, add enough water and sugar, and then leave it alone.
By the time he finished his morning workout, the fresh hot soy milk was just ready. He’d dissolve the lactone in warm water at the right ratio, pour it into the hot soy milk while stirring repeatedly to ensure it blended thoroughly, then cover it and let it sit for twenty minutes.
—Ta-da! A bucket of tender, white, wobbly-soft tofu pudding was done!
That morning, Xia Yiyang was woken up by the aroma of soy milk filling the air.
He groggily got dressed and went downstairs, only to see the two aunties clustered around Sheng Lin, praising his tofu pudding from every angle.
Xia Yiyang snapped wide awake in an instant, trotted over, and sure enough, saw the stainless steel bucket filled with soft, tender tofu pudding.
He was overjoyed: “Boss, you know how to curdle tofu?”
Auntie Zhao asked, “What does ‘curdle’ mean?”
“Curdling” tofu was a Northern dialect term that the aunties naturally didn’t understand. It refers to the process of using a coagulant to solidify soy milk. There’s even a folk saying: “Brine curdles tofu—everything has its match.”
That is to say, everything in the world has something that keeps it in check.
As for the coagulant used for curdling tofu, the North and South also differ. In the North, salt brine is more common, producing firmer tofu suitable for stir-frying. In the South, gypsum is more common, producing smoother, more tender tofu ideal for soups. If you use lactone to curdle the tofu, you get that pristine white tofu pudding—perfect as a dessert topped with brown sugar. Ba shi de hen!
Of course, whether it’s salt brine, gypsum, or lactone, it’s all basically a chemical reaction. Salt brine is magnesium chloride, gypsum is calcium carbonate, lactone is gluconic acid… They undergo ionic cross-linking reactions with the soy protein in the soy milk, ultimately causing the soy milk to denature and solidify.
The ice jelly shop now had a new dessert, so the menu on the wall and the small blackboard outside both needed updating. They didn’t have printed menus—just two small blackboards hung on the wall, with the prices for ice jelly and liangxia hand-written on them, along with the available fruit toppings, syrups, and ice cream flavors.
Whoever had designed the blackboard menu had drawn an ugly little table on it—neat, sure, but completely lacking in charm.
Sheng Lin measured the space below the blackboard and decided to add a new row at the bottom, squeezing in the price for sweet tofu pudding.
“Boss, let me do it!” The young master volunteered, raising his hand. “I’ve been wanting to fix that ugly menu forever!”
Sheng Lin paused, chalk in hand. “What did you say?”
“This menu has zero design sense. Is this really a dessert shop? That’s how the place next door—the one selling fifteen-yuan self-serve boxed meals—writes its menu!” Xia Yiyang couldn’t help complaining. “Boss, who wrote this menu anyway?”
Sheng Lin turned to look at him. “I did.”
“…” Xia Yiyang hastily backtracked. “Now that I look more closely, I realize the calligraphy is bold and powerful, with real character—and the layout is clean and easy to read. It’s… it’s a good menu!”
The boy’s flustered attempt to cover his tracks was hilarious. Auntie Zhao shot Auntie Li a look and whispered, “See that? That’s what they mean by ‘everything has its match.’”
Auntie Li nodded in deep agreement.
Since Xia Yiyang wanted to redesign the menu, Sheng Lin certainly had no objections. The man took down the two small blackboards and set them on the table, then laid out chalk, erasers, and all the necessary tools for Xia Yiyang so he could focus on his “creation.”
The young master didn’t hold back. He pushed the two boards together to form a long strip, thought for just a few minutes, and then started writing.
At the top of the blackboard, he wrote [Midsummer Ice Jelly Shop – Summer Menu]. Then, on a new line, from left to right, he wrote [Main Items], [Today’s Fruits], [Free Toppings], [Upgrade Options], and [Syrups].
Under [Main Items] were ice jelly, liangxia, and sweet tofu pudding.
[Free Toppings] included things like sunflower seeds and red beans.
[Upgrade Options] reminded customers whether they wanted to add an extra scoop of ice cream or a spoonful of mini glutinous rice balls.
[Syrups] covered the differences between brown sugar, condensed milk, and honey.
The boy’s handwriting was elegant and beautiful—clearly something he’d practiced.
What’s more, everything was written in both Chinese and English: Last time, Brother Qin had been mistaken for a foreigner—though that turned out to be a misunderstanding—but Xia Yiyang worried about what would happen if a real foreign customer came in and the aunties couldn’t speak English. Would they just turn the business away? So he specially added English translations for everyone’s convenience.
After finishing the text, Xia Yiyang moved to the [Today’s Fruits] column, rolled up his sleeves, and began his true masterpiece—this time, not writing, but drawing!
He leaned over the blackboard, long lashes lowered, the tips of his fingers holding the chalk slightly flushed. So focused was he that his lips unconsciously pressed together, and occasionally he’d stick out the tip of his tongue to moisten his dry cupid’s bow.
Under his brushstroke, there appeared triangular slices of watermelon, juicy mangoes, refreshing pineapple, soft sweet yellow peaches… Each fruit was drawn so vividly that even a kindergarten kid who couldn’t read yet would recognize them at a glance.
Beautiful lettering paired with childlike stick-figure illustrations—it was eye-catching and full of charm.
“OK, all done!” Xia Yiyang put down the chalk and stepped back to admire his masterpiece.
The boy’s nose tip and forehead were both dusted with a bit of chalk powder—not sloppy-looking at all, but rather adorably endearing, making one’s heart itch.
Sheng Lin couldn’t help reaching out to him, gently rubbing the tip of his nose.
Xia Yiyang was startled by his sudden movement, and his heart immediately began racing wildly. He stammered, “Wh-what are you doing?”
“There’s chalk dust.” Sheng Lin kept his composure and raised his hand again to brush across his forehead. “There’s some here too.”
“Oh…” That inexplicable heat crept over Xia Yiyang once more. How strange—there was air conditioning in the shop, so why did his face still feel so hot?
The two aunties crowded around the blackboard, looking it over from every angle. Auntie Li was the most dramatic: “Oh my goodness, Xiao Xia is truly amazing—his writing is beautiful, and his drawings are beautiful too. How did such a talented kid come about? Boss, don’t you think Xiao Xia’s work is absolutely top-notch?”
Xia Yiyang’s eyes immediately turned to Sheng Lin with anticipation.
Sheng Lin answered steadily: “It’s not bad.”
Xia Yiyang wasn’t satisfied and pressed further: “Better than yours?”
Sheng Lin paused for a moment, then finally admitted: “Mm.”
Only then was the young master satisfied, practically puffing out his chest with pride.
Sheng Lin had to admit—he really liked seeing that smug little look on the young master’s face.
……
Xia Yiyang’s newly designed menu certainly turned heads. Many customers were drawn in by the new sweet tofu pudding advertised on the signboard. By mid-afternoon, the entire bucket of tofu pudding was already sold out!
Today was only the first day of its launch, and Sheng Lin hadn’t even had time to add sweet tofu pudding to the delivery apps. Just from in-store traffic alone, the tofu pudding was already gone.
Since it was a new item, Sheng Lin hadn’t prepared enough soybeans and couldn’t make a second batch.
Xia Yiyang felt a bit regretful—he hadn’t even had a chance to taste the shop’s very first bucket of tofu pudding. He really wanted to know what it tasted like.
But unexpectedly, after the shop closed that night, Sheng Lin took out a bowl of tofu pudding as smooth as solidified cream from the fridge and handed it to the boy.
“I saved this for you,” Sheng Lin said casually. “Go ahead and eat it.”
The tofu pudding in the bowl wasn’t broken up—it was clean and pristine, its surface as smooth as still water. This meant it hadn’t been portioned out from a large bucket later on. Instead, at the very beginning of the process, right after the soy milk and lactone had been mixed, the person making it had specifically poured this portion into a beautiful glass bowl and let it set quietly on its own.
The young master was overjoyed. He even took a shower just for this bowl of sweet tofu pudding—first enjoying a nice, long bath, then cradling the bowl out to the terrace.
The night was deep, even the snack street had fallen into slumber. Alone with the night breeze, he carefully opened his treasure box of moonlight.
The delicate tofu pudding was cut into small pieces, topped with two big spoonfuls of fermented glutinous rice, poured over with chilled coconut milk, and finally sprinkled with a tiny pinch of golden dried osmanthus—a simple bowl of fermented rice coconut milk iced tofu pudding was complete.
The wine-like aroma of the fermented rice, the refreshing coolness of the coconut milk, the silky tenderness of the tofu pudding, the fragrance of the dried osmanthus… all four elements blended together perfectly, bursting on Xia Yiyang’s tongue.
It was so delicious that Xia Yiyang couldn’t help hopping up and down around the table in a wild celebratory dance, like a primitive man expressing his worship of fire through movement.
Watching him dance through the glass window from the living room, Sheng Lin: “…”
Was this kid for real? It was just a bowl of sweet tofu pudding.
The man shook his head helplessly, saying he couldn’t understand—yet he didn’t notice the smile melting across his own face.
Xia Yiyang didn’t just eat it himself—he had to let his phone eat too. He adjusted the layout on the table, focused the camera on the sweet tofu pudding, blurred the string lights on the terrace in the background, and pressed the shutter—click—a diagonal composition food photo with an Instagram aesthetic was born.
The only pity was that there wasn’t a single flower on the terrace—he couldn’t find any foreground or background elements to complement the shot.
He tweaked the brightness and contrast of the photo, then opened WeChat Moments and posted it.
The caption was a rather pretentious line:
@YiYi: A bowl of tofu pudding, a bowl of summer.
[Shared photo]
The moment this post went up, the likes started pouring in, and the comment section was quickly overrun by his classmates and friends.
[Holy crap, the missing person returns!! Xia Yiyang, do you even realize how long it’s been since your last post?]
[You’re having a late-night snack at this hour? A girl trying to lose weight is silently crying over here.]
[You’ve betrayed the people of Beijing—you’re eating sweet tofu pudding??]
[Yiyi, you’re still in Sichuan?]
[Dude, you went to Sichuan and went wild, huh? How come you haven’t posted a single photo?]
[Photos photos photos photos.]
[Your last photo was you landing in Rongcheng, and then you just vanished from Moments for half a month—we were so worried about you.]
After the college entrance exams, the students were finally free. Everyone was determined to make up for all the lost vacation time from their senior year, and they’d all arranged spontaneous trips. Xia Yiyang’s classmates were scattered far and wide—every time he scrolled through his phone, he’d see their travel posts.
[One more page turned in the book of the world (checking in at Tianshan)]
[On this night, I can almost pluck the stars (checking in at Qinghai Lake)]
[Short of oxygen, but not short of faith (checking in at the Himalayas)]
[Gotta recite the Tengwang Pavilion Preface while I still have the knowledge fresh in my brain to get that free ticket]
[Gotta visit Orange Isle at least once, and feel the wind that the great man once felt]
[Mount Tai? Easy!]
[So this is the place they talked about in geography class]
[At eighteen, my footnote is freedom.]
Looking at all those carefully curated photos from his classmates, Xia Yiyang would be lying if he said he wasn’t envious.
He could have been just as happy and carefree as them, posting ten Moments updates a week!
It was all the fault of that damn telecom scam, and that damn Wen Sen. Now he was stuck working at an ice jelly shop, sleeping on his boss’s couch with no air conditioning.
At that thought, the young master got so mad he slammed the table—and accidentally knocked his phone off. He scrambled to pick it up, but in his haste, he banged his head against the tabletop, leaving him crouched on the floor clutching his head in pain.
Sheng Lin, watching from behind the glass door: “…”
What was going on? No matter how good the tofu pudding was, surely the young master didn’t need to bow down to it?
Xia Yiyang got up dejectedly and continued eating his sweet tofu pudding with a gloomy expression.
He’d announced to the whole world that he was going to Sichuan after the exams—he’d set the bar too high, and now that things had gone sideways, he didn’t even know who to tell. …Ah, this tofu pudding was really good.
Sure, he’d earned some money working on his own, but Sichuan was huge, and there were too many places he wanted to go. He could only afford a few cheap destinations. …Ah, this tofu pudding was really good.
On top of that, he was now working at Sheng Lin’s shop with only one day off a week—he couldn’t just take leave whenever he wanted, since he still had his eye on that perfect attendance bonus. …Ah, this tofu pudding was really good.
But going too long without posting on Moments definitely wasn’t an option. Last time he’d called his mom, she’d already been nagging him about it. Now his classmates were paying attention too—he’d have to post some travel photos to keep up appearances. …Ah, this tofu pudding was really good—how did it disappear so fast?
The young master put down the empty glass bowl, licking his lips with a lingering sense of satisfaction.
Now, two equally urgent matters lay before him—
First, he needed to get out and have some fun as soon as possible. Ideally, he’d find someone to go with him and take plenty of photos.
Second, he wanted another bowl of sweet tofu pudding tomorrow.
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