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One Tael of sterling silver for An
Egg
One day Huang Zhiyun was at leisure, turning randomly over a notebook. When he read “two eggs” and its note below. The note is “each egg costs one tael of sterling silver.” He was very surprised at it, saying: “Granted that the price of eggs is high, there is no reason to be so expensive. ” He sent for the cook and rebuked him for practice of fraud. Who would have thought that the cook said: “The eggs I brought here cannot be compared with those sold at the market. A tael of sterling silver for one egg is very cheap. If you don’t trust me, you may employ another cook, but please taste carefully those eggs from the market and differentiate their taste.” After that he asked for resignation and left. Huang Zhiyun did employ another cook. Though the price of eggs dropped, they were not so delicious as they had been before. He changed several cooks in succession but the tast of eggs did not change. Finally he reemployed the first cook and eggs were as nice as they were before. Huang Zhiyun was puzzled about it and asked the cook: “What on earth did you do to make eggs so delicious?” The cook replied: “My family has raised has raised one hundred of chickens. Every day I grind ginseng, rhizome and red dates into powder and then I mixed the powder with other fodder so that these eggs are fresh and delicious. You may send someone to my house and he will find out what I said is true.” Huang Zhiyun did so. It turned out that the cook was honest. Huang Zhiyun would mention again of change of cooks since then.
Carry two baskets of pork stewed with Huangshan Mountain Shoot Huang Zhiyun’s love of bamboo became his second nature. Not only he made bamboo as his another name, but also he grew bamboo is his garden and gave his garden a name with me meaning of bamboo. Still more interesting is that he liked very much eating bamboo shoots. Of course the bamboos in his garden were planted for appreciation. The bamboo shoots here were not suitable for eating, even if few were edible. Thus Huang Zhiyun liked Huangshan’s bamboo shoots best and ate them fresh from the mountain. But it is far from Huangshan Mountain to Yangzhou. How could he eat the bamboo shoots newly dug out? To ordinary people, it is a most fantastic idea, but to the richest salt merchant, it was another matter. It turned out that someone had long before designed especially for him a mobile stove. After his cook dug out bamboo shoots in Huangshan, washed and cut them immeaintel and put them into put stewed with pork on the stove. Then let the porter carried the stove to Yangzhou when the cook and the porter arrived at Yangzhou, the pork and the bamboo shoots had been pared. It is evident how expensive this dish is.
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