Chapter 1

An unwelcome visitor appeared at my wonton stall.

She was a delicate beauty in simple, elegant clothes, accompanied by a maid. Every wonton took her two bites, and she sipped her broth a tiny spoonful at a time.

Beside the unshaven men clutching their bowls and slurping away, she was a clean, pleasing sight.

But one eyeful was enough. Eating that slowly was holding up my tables.

Halfway through her meal, she even stopped, put down her spoon, and sighed softly.

Her maid took the cue at once and rounded on me.

“And you call these the best wontons for miles around? They’re impossible to swallow!”

The only answer was the sound of the other customers scraping their bowls. Awkward.

What could you expect? It was early, and everyone wanted to finish breakfast and get to work.

“There’s a restaurant farther down the road. You could try that. Perhaps their food will suit you better.”

In the end, I obliged her with a word while clearing a table. The woman perked up immediately, glanced at me, and smiled.

To borrow the words my husband had taught me, she looked smug and certain of victory.

“Do forgive us, Proprietress Song. We’re from the capital. We really cannot bear this grubby bustle of common life.”

“No trouble. You’ve paid.”

“Food like this would hardly merit a glance in the capital.”

“No trouble. This isn’t the capital.”

“Plain fare is tolerable once in a while. Too much of it grows dreadfully insipid.”

If I still couldn’t tell what she was after when she was being this pointed, I wouldn’t be Song Xihua.

“Miss, plain fare may not taste wonderful, but at least it won’t make you ill. It’s other people’s leftovers that upset your stomach if you eat too much.”

I left her standing there white-faced and walked off, swinging my cleaning rag.

In business, goodwill brings prosperity. Show me an inch of respect and I’ll return a foot.

But provoke me, and I have plenty to say that will ruin your day.

I could guess who she was. A woman from the capital, looking down on me with every other word.

It could only be that rotten old romantic attachment of my husband Yang Dongye’s.

When he first came to our town to teach, he had been quite sought after. Educated, handsome, courteous, and apparently tall and sturdy: a fine catch.

Then people made inquiries. His family back home had been convicted of a crime, his monthly pay amounted to very little, and he had a frail mother who had once been a pampered lady. Several matchmaking attempts came to nothing, and gradually nobody asked about him anymore.

I, meanwhile, was the town’s famous old maid. My looks were respectable, passable at best.

But my ability was equally famous. I could swing a fifty-jin sack of rice flour with one hand, knead dough for two hours without tiring, and run an entire food shop by myself. Business was booming.

Everyone thought we were unsuitable. His colleagues called me coarse, fierce, and ugly as sin.

My friends and relatives said he had grown all that tall for nothing: he couldn’t carry a load on his shoulders or lift it with his hands. You couldn’t eat a pretty face.

Who said you couldn’t? I ate very well indeed.

My dream in life was to own a restaurant, be its proprietress, and come home to a handsome, courteous husband fussing over my comfort. What bliss!

Yang Dongye met every requirement of my taste. He was gentle, too, without the lofty arrogance of other scholars.

Once, while I was hauling flour home, a pebble caught my cart. He happened to pass and steadied it for me without a word.

The next day, I took a box of breakfast to the academy and intercepted him to say thank you. He looked surprised, hesitated, then accepted it.

Accept my food, and you belong to me, you know?

That box held thirty fresh-pork wontons, fragrant and filling. He was still savoring them on his way home after class, only to arrive and find the matchmaker already there.

I’m a woman of action. I like to strike while the iron is hot.

The matchmaker told me then that he had been engaged before. Just before the wedding, a death in the girl’s family had required her to observe mourning. His family had agreed to wait.

Three years later, his own family had its property confiscated.

This time, the girl’s family showed no such consideration. The marriage was called off outright.

I didn’t mind the old attachment. They hadn’t married, after all. If he still pined for her, surely he wouldn’t agree to be with me.

Yang Dongye made careful inquiries about me, too, and learned that I had poisoned my family at fifteen and publicly cursed an elder at eighteen.

No lies there. I admitted it.

At fifteen, my father had broken his leg and been left bedridden. Mother wailed at home that life was impossible and she might as well die.

To oblige her, I bought rat poison that very day and asked whether she preferred it stirred into her porridge or served as a dip for her flatbread. It frightened her so thoroughly that she never threatened to kill herself again.

At eighteen, my eldest uncle decided that since our family had no son and Father was useless, he could seize our farmland.

I handed him Father along with it, then took Mother and my younger sister to live at the food shop. His family couldn’t manage the old man’s feeding and toileting, so they came into town to quarrel with me.

“Those fields have nothing to do with us sisters or our mother, correct? You wanted them. Then you support my father. What’s the problem?”

“He’s your own father! Refusing to care for him is unfilial!”

“I’m a daughter who will marry out sooner or later. How can I have a say in the Song family’s affairs? And if I do have a say, why can’t I inherit my father’s fields?”

“But—but you can’t just dump him on us and leave! A married daughter still visits her birth family!”

“I will. Once every ten days, from now on, to see how you’re caring for him. Don’t mistreat him. He only broke a leg. He ought to live another twenty years at least.”

It was perfectly reasonable. Nobody could find fault.

He and my aunt fled amid the spectators’ jeers. For years afterward, they never dared show themselves again.

And that very ruthlessness became Yang Dongye’s reason for choosing me.

He called me a heroine and said he could never have handled things so impressively.

He hadn’t seen the half of it. Once Mother went back, I had her steal every land deed out of the house. If Uncle’s family caused trouble again, I wasn’t afraid of an open fight.

I held our family’s livelihood in my hands.

I, a woman, was the one keeping our household standing.

Yang Dongye considered that a virtue. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t call me a shrew.

Good. Points for him.

We were both getting on, so we didn’t fuss over all the formal marriage letters and rites. We married quickly and got on with our lives.