Xiaozhai preferred vegetarian dishes—a little bit of meat was all right, but lavish food was definitely a no-no.
Cooking was a hobby of Gu Yu’s and he would often keep all kinds of ingredients around. Today he made braised eggplant, lightly spiced tofu, fried asparagus and a bowl of lotus root soup.
Dusk during summer time was still imbued with daylight. One could only detect the slightly dimmed sunlight through a glass window from inside. Gu Yu did not lay the dishes on the round table today, but set up the brick bed table, which had not been put in use for quite some years, instead.
It was his grandfather who had the table made; it was rectangular in shape and had four short legs. The board was made from old elm wood, its patterns already blackened. The two young fellows in their early twenties crossed their long legs and sat there eating on a brick bed. A snake reposed itself beside the girl, sticking out its two-pronged tongue every now and then.
