Longzhou Calendar, 1779, January 3rd
Even though the New Year's Eve and the Spring Festival were celebrated at the clan's ancestral hall, Xu Shuhui still organised a private family gathering from a traditional perspective.
In this gathering, there were no servants. There were only five members of the family, cooking a genuine reunion dinner.
Tang Sen was responsible for handling the animals, including skinning them, draining the blood, and breaking them down into chunks.
Tang Luo and Tang Xing were responsible for delivering these ingredients to their mother, who was at the stove-front.
Even Nuan Nuan, the youngest, was asked to wash the vegetables and pick out the undesirable ones with a small basin.
But honestly, Tang Luo felt that the most difficult time of the year is when it came to this reunion dinner, because their mother, Xu Shuhui's cooking skills were, truthfully, quite ordinary.
