Lanxi, Zhejiang Province, is known as the first morning tea in Jiangnan. According to Lanxi City Records, there were more than 300 kinds of snacks in Lanxi at the peak. The culture of morning tea emerged because of the benefits of water transportation: boat runners, shopkeepers and merchants had to drink a cup of morning tea and eat some snacks before they went about their business.

Today's river is no longer seen once the endless flow of cargo ships, and there is no stores along the river pier, but the morning tea street in Lanxi is still bustling with smoke and fire .......

This dedication to food is not only reflected in the many snacks on its streets and lanes, but also infiltrated in the blood of many locals.

Since her birth, Miao has carried this strongest link to food with her all the way until she met the French food culture on the other side of the Eurasian continent.

When she was a child, Miao's dreams were all about food, and when she grew up, she wanted to be the director of a plum factory so that she could have an endless supply of plums.

Looking back at her childhood, she can't remember ever worrying about food at a time when material things were still relatively scarce.

Miao Jun: "Our family never worried about food, my grandmother or my mother would change the simplest ingredients into a variety of dishes. The family has a (eat a lot of knowledge) about food, see more eat more will feel."

With both parents working as double-income workers in state-run factories, much of her childhood was spent with her grandmother. Miaojun's grandparents were two capable lifers who both cooked well. They once ran a pastry store featuring local specialties.

After Miao Jun's birth, the once sweet and savory mung bean cakes and egg cakes became steaming bowls of wontons and noodles, and her grandmother's noodle stall held deep memories of her childhood.

Miao Jun: "When I was four years old, I helped my grandmother make wontons, and I did it with one hand! My left hand was holding the wonton skin, and my right hand was holding a bamboo stick. The bamboo skewer was filled with a little bit of minced meat, rolled, pinched, and thrown with my left hand, and then it went into the pot. ......

During the day, the store's tablet was used to make pasta, and at night it became the bed we slept on, which was a very impressive experience."

As they grew older, Miaojun and her older sister became involved in the chores of caring for the family early on. As they often had to stay home alone, they were able to build their own fires and cook by the age of seven.

Miao: "At first we cooked on a kerosene stove, and then we burned firewood.

It was more of a life-skills learning experience than a knowledge learning experience, but it was very useful.

My sister and I would figure out how to do things on our own when we were in trouble or whatever, rather than resorting too much to other people, and for that reason I personally felt that I was more independent, I guess."

This independence and the ability to deal with problems accumulated by the small things in life became a good umbrella for her when she traveled to a foreign country more than two decades later.

Beyond that, food is a memory and a legacy for Mu Jun.

To this day, she proudly remembers how her lunch box was always the center of attention when the school cafeteria steamed her food.

Miao Jun: "My lunchbox would have grains and rice, and it would have all sorts of things: lotus seeds, black rice and some walnuts. Because my mom wanted us to have a healthy body and felt we had to keep up with our diet, so we ate grains and cereals."

At a young age, Miao Jun and her sister are still very good at tinkering, and in their kitchen kingdom they do all sorts of experiments, as well as some more difficult cooking, such as washing watermelon seeds with quicklime, brining watermelon seeds, and making moss, sugar-skinned red fruits, and so on.

Sometimes they follow their mothers around to watch and help, sometimes they do it on their own with their mothers pointing out, and sometimes they "cook" something out of thin air.

These actions with memories are surrounded by the smell of food, and also make this memory with the flavor of the mother.

Years later, when Miao Jun became a mother, she took over the baton from her mother and took her daughter on adventures in the kitchen, not just as a mother-daughter bonding moment, but as a family legacy of love for food.

In this way, Mu Jun spent a happy childhood and carefree teenage years with a wide range of ingredients. When she thought she was setting sail, she suffered from emotional stress and failed the college entrance exam.

But this failure became one of the most important experiences of her life, as she gained a deeper understanding of emotions, and it was then that she was introduced to meditation and qigong, the practice of meditating and cultivating the body.

From the initial pain in her feet, to the gradual adaptation of her body, to the gradual feeling of peace, she felt the power of her heart through meditation.

The next year, she was admitted into the French program. She left home for the first time and began her journey in French.

The road to language learning is long and painful, and Miao Jun says she is not one of those people who have a gift for languages.

Being the dumb bird that she is, she had a very simple four years in college, basically just a simple campus life with her head in the sand. It wasn't all in her toolkit, though, and the experience of doing chores as a young girl nicely shaped some of those traits.

Miao: "The strength to persevere probably came from doing housework with my parents when I was young, and I think there's a close connection between the two. I think there is a close connection between the two. When my parents' factory closed down and they retired, they chose to run a small store, where they were exposed to all kinds of food, oil, rice, soy, vinegar and tea.

Let's say our family sold rice, the simplest sale of rice. At that time, the rice imported to the store, there are a lot of small stones and sand mixed. In order to improve the sale of rice, our family did a step, is to use the rice sieve to filter out the small stone impurities. Seems like a very simple action simple, but in fact quite tedious and test eye.

When I came back from my summer vacation, I helped my parents sift the rice in the store to improve its purity, so our family's rice sold the best in that area, too."

With this kind of persistence, she successfully completed her undergraduate and graduate studies, while taking on many French teaching duties. Later, by chance, Miao joined Michelin Tire, one of the top 500 companies in the world, as a technical interpreter and translator.

After saving enough money for her first year abroad, she finally had the chance to go abroad after so many years of dealing with French, and it was the beginning of her relationship with France for the next fifteen years.

But what greeted her was not the romance of the legendary Paris, but the subversive and rigorous experience from the top translation school in Paris, Paris Gaultier.

Miao Jun: "In the first year, I can basically say that my self-confidence was completely destroyed, both in terms of language and logical thinking, and I personally felt that it was a complete blow.

In China, although we have had postgraduate training, it was only for writing small articles and master's theses. In Paris, on the other hand, the pressure and intensity of learning is stronger than that of two years at home.

Apart from meals, it's basically in front of the computer, in the library, in the classroom, and on weekends it's all the same pace."

Miao recalls that there were nearly ten courses a week, each with a seven- or eight-page report due every week, and almost no activities other than writing in the dark.

Under the pressure of such high-pressure coursework, Miao Jun received her first report, the first cliff blow: twenty full marks, she only got four (ten passes)!

Of course, she was not the only one to receive such a grade, and many students cried on the spot in the classroom.

The cruelty of high school is well known: by the time Miao Jun graduated, there were only seven or eight students left.

From no critical thinking to French college-style writing, from the bottom of the four points to slowly creep a little bit to get ten points, then twelve points, fourteen points.

The six-month leap of change won the praise of the then director of high-flip teaching, who said she had never seen a student make so much progress in such a short period of time!

Like a delicious ingredient that needs to be carefully cooked over a slow fire, Miao Jun is going through the same stage of life. The days are tough, but she still possesses the mindset to cook well, eat well, and live well.

Just like this in a flash, she not only got the graduation of the postgraduate study of high flipping, but also got the opportunity to study at the doctoral level of translation.

During her doctoral studies, she met another mentor in her life, André Salem, who guided her doctoral dissertation to a "very good" grade.

This dissertation was the culmination of five years of her life, and the "cooking" of her doctorate was much more difficult than that of her graduate studies, requiring a small fire and the greatest patience to wait for the moment when the essence of her work would come to the surface.

Miao Jun: "Undergraduate study is like a sponge, what you give him can be absorbed, saturated. Graduate school is like climbing a mountain, but you can see the top of the mountain, you just have to climb up there, and with the tools you can climb over. But for the doctoral stage, there's no mountain there, and you need to build a mountain out of it."

It's really about digging a hole and jumping in it yourself, and climbing back up afterwards.

In the endless bibliography, Miao had to put forward her own questions and speculations in the existing research areas of her predecessors. In the process of non-stop reading, and in the different stages of derivation, she was faced with countless doubts over and over again: self-doubts, doubts of her supervisors, doubts of her family and friends, and countless moments when she wanted to give up.

But with the tremendous energy behind the phrase "one meal at a time, one thing at a time", Miao Jun has been able to sustain herself.

Together with the meditation he encountered after failing the college entrance exam and the Tai Chi he came across after arriving in France, they became the most reliable pills to calm down his emotions and keep going.

Miao: "In Tai Chi, if you want to overcome or defeat your opponent, once you have such a thought, you have already lost. So Tai Chi teaches us to use a normal mind."

In the days when she started her PhD, she also thought about increasing the fire to make her thesis cook faster, so that she could get married and start a family quickly, get a job, go earn money, and have her own career.

But through the ups and downs, through the food and Tai Chi, Miao Jun gradually realized the ****tong true meaning behind the big theory. Her heart gradually calmed down, and then she gained the power of "determination" and "peace". When she calmed down to sort out and express her views, it was the time when her fire was at its peak.

In five years, she used the cooking method of gentle fire to complete her thesis meal, which is thick and nourishing, and this meal also won the defense of the highest level of honors that few people can get.

At the same time, she was transformed into the essence of her own life.

Miao Jun: "I gained a kind of self-confidence at the end of my doctoral studies, and how did I get this self-confidence?

After reading a lot, you get a wider sky and know where your knowledge blind spots are, but at the same time, it also gives you a power to know that you are capable of learning.

(Reading a blog makes you) look at things with a critical eye whenever you want, rather than sticking to one point and looking at things one-sidedly. I think doing a PhD has given me (the ability) to look at things holistically, which means I've honed my logical thinking skills."

In the gap after her doctorate, Miao Jun had a very different life. If she experienced the rigor and cruelty of French higher education during her doctoral studies, her internship in the dessert department of Potel & Chabot gave her the ultimate experience of hitting one of the quintessential aspects of French culture, French cuisine, especially desserts.

With an excellent self-referral letter and a recommendation from a friend, she included stories of her grandmother's pastry store as a child, and of her childhood and adolescence, when she grew up surrounded by food.

Not coincidentally, Mr. Marc Rivière, the former world dessert champion in charge of recruiting, had a similar experience with his grandmother. When story meets story, Mugun, who had no formal chef training, was busted.

What she didn't realize was the complexity and magnitude of the world behind a tiny piece of dessert.

Miao: "There are a lot of sub-divisions in pastry, such as the fruit department that specializes in cutting fruit, the chocolate department that makes chocolate, the large pastry department, the small pastry department, and the ice cream department, and there are a lot of sub-categories.

I was assigned to the chocolate and small pastry departments. The division of labor in each department is very specific, for example, the fruit-cutting department cuts fruit in a very specific way, taking into account the pastry that goes with it.

Let's take the simplest example, say strawberries? You want to dice, or slice, a cut four petals or five petals, in fact, there are instructions. There's often a coordination effort between the various departments of pastry, and when it's finally done, it's a matter of combining what several departments have accomplished."

Behind each exquisite dessert, in addition to multi-departmental coordination, there are also aspects of research and development, taste, transportation, appearance, shelf life and so on. More than the comfortable and cozy environment in which the desserts are savored, behind the making of the desserts are the countless hours of dedication of the dessert chefs.

Miao arrives at her workplace by 6:30am every morning, and after lunch, she is on her feet until 4:00pm when she can call it a day.

The ultra-high-intensity workload, the strict French food hygiene standards, and the extreme finishing process have all brought Miao Jun's understanding of ingredients and food to a whole new level, opening the door to a new world.

One of the most beneficial aspects was learning from the master of a former world dessert champion, which also allowed her to discover the secret behind becoming a true master.

Miao Jun: "At that time, my master was calling me over to work under him, and he was showing us the force. Every movement he made was done with heart, and what we, in doing the same movement, lacked was that heart. For that reason the taste of the pastries he makes is like no other."

Jun Miao: "For example, when we do the laminating, it's very simple, just use your strength to squeeze.

But under his hands, the force he uses, the way he mounts the flower, and the angle he uses, each detail is different, and the result is naturally different.

It's like calligraphy. The force he uses is completely different from the force we use. Every action, only if it has been repeated tens of thousands of times, will have the effect of a pure fire."

When an action is simply repeated tens of thousands of times, it is practiced to the extreme, and the spirit of pursuing the extreme behind the food is precisely the most treasured one to look back on in life.

This is Miao Jun's concept of a delicious life.

No matter where she goes, no matter what kind of life situation she meets, she will follow the simple and plain principle of buying food well, cooking well, and eating well, which consists of twelve words.

Because of this, even if life is difficult, the moment the food enters the mouth, it is the opportunity to light up the life.

There are many similarities between life and food, and the process of life is like the process of cooking, we need to pay great attention to the present life, and grasp the timing and fire.

Cherish everyone who appears in your life, cherish every ingredient you meet, and treat it well.

Different encounters and sequences in life create different possibilities in life, and isn't that also true for food?

Everyone makes a meal with their own attributes, and because of this created a myriad of dishes that will make your heart flutter, a hundred flavors of life also created a thousand kinds of life infinite possibilities: the aroma of overflowing! Radiant! Hot and steamy!!!

Wenjing: What is the biggest gain of your years in France?

Miao Jun: I personally feel that my time in France has helped me to know what kind of person I am, and it's important to live up to that point

Wenjing: What's so special about interning in the top French restaurant industry, and what's so special about you as a Chinese person?

Miao Jun: I think I was a bit of a shock to them, thanks to my familiarity with food as a child.

For example, one of the chefs told me to make the center of a flower on a cake by cutting out a little bit of a red circle of dough and rolling it around. He did it with a knife. I started out the same way he did, using a knife to cut a thin strip, but then I realized it was too inefficient and followed my own experience with this kind of pasta in China.

You can roll two, three, and then five strips at the same time. Then a larger knife is used to cut them, and then the small particles are kneaded into little balls. I also don't roll them one by one, but ten or twenty together, so I can make many of them in a very short time.

It's actually very stressful when it comes to pastry making, and every task has a time limit, so you have to finish it within a specified time, or you'll affect the next colleague's takeover.

I made more than 300 in almost ten minutes, which is way above their level!

Another detail is that I used chopsticks. Previously, they used a layer of maltose wrapped around the outside of the cashews, and they basically wore gloves to slowly pick up the cashews one by one, and from time to time, the gloves got stuck to the maltose in the process. Personally, I felt that this was too inefficient, so the next day I brought a pair of sterilized chopsticks from home, and when I used them to pick up the cashews, they came out with a "whoosh" and did not stick to my hands. So we were all impressed (and it was quite interesting to see how the Chinese and Western dining tools were borrowed).

Manjing: What is the connection between food and life?

Miao Jun: Anxiety is very common nowadays, and a very important point here is that you don't know how to live anymore. This actually goes back to the original point: how do you recognize yourself? How to live? How do you live each day?

Food, you need to choose the dishes, conceptualization, shopping, as well as making, arranging the above steps is actually a very major and important point in the daily life. In addition to dining with people in life, which dishes to make can be a topic of conversation, the basis of communication between people. For this reason these parts can be said to be in addition to the work of the day it. But many people are more blind is that only want to work to get a sense of fulfillment in life.

And this tends to ignore and family companionship this process. After this neglect, then the remaining goal is to work hard to make money as the ultimate goal of life.

In France, they actually pay a lot of attention to this kind of dietary exchanges, they can eat a meal for more than four hours, talk about food will be endless.

There are so many things about Miao and her life in food that her later work feels like a culinary journey.

This article is the result of a two-and-a-half hour interview, eight pages of writing, more than ten hours of writing and post-production. Like food that waits patiently to be cooked over a gentle fire, you need to put your heart into it in order to make it have a soul, as with every dish made with care. That's why you cry when you eat a dish, and your heart swells when you read a story.

On the recommendation of Mu Jun, this article was slowly created along with the Japanese drama Tokyo Grand Hotel. I'm ashamed to say that after three years of coming to France, I didn't really appreciate one of the essence of French culture, French food, when I was studying French. Through this drama, I have deepened my understanding of the hard work of chefs and the essence of French cuisine, and more importantly, the attitude towards food.

Since I started to live, I realized that it is not easy to eat well three times a day, and some times when I was busy, I couldn't take care of my stomach, and I didn't have the peace of mind to cook. Until later contact with some people who will eat well, and found that they are carrying a light wisdom of life.

This wisdom is like the essence of life concentrated extracted in your most depressed and helpless moment, a bowl of steaming noodles, or fragrant fried rice can make you lift.

Because the wisdom behind this is with the reverence for food, the care of ordinary small things, wrapped into the sensibility, the moment you enter the mouth, it will burst into power.

To eat well! So, what are you going to eat today?

This series was initiated by Shih Wenjing, a traveler and trilingual content creator, to document 101 different lives.

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