The shop's interior was simply decorated. Within a few days, the custom-made large dining tables and small snack trays were placed on the camel-hair rug. The wall shelves were adorned with plants—slender bamboo, twisted pine, crab-claw-like chrysanthemums, and other small trinkets sourced from the East and West Markets. Even the kitchen was fully equipped with pots, pans, bowls, plates, spoons, chopsticks, and stoves of all sizes for roasting and steaming. Everything was ready—only the staff was needed before the grand opening.
The Shao family had been in Chang'an for generations and was well-versed in business. They had connections with reputable slave traders. After dividing responsibilities with Shen Shaoguang, Shao Jie entrusted the slave traders to procure reliable personnel. While cooks were essential, the most crucial role was the "manager"—what later generations would call a "shopkeeper."
With just one branch, Shen Shaoguang could manage, albeit busily. But if more branches opened in the future, even a doppelgänger wouldn’t suffice. It was better to establish rules and systems from the start.
Given the scale of the tavern, each branch would require one manager, two servers, and two cooks—one head and one assistant. The old shop in Chongxian Fang was staffed accordingly.
Shen Shaoguang also needed to clarify the "career paths" of her existing team.
A Yuan had been with her the longest. A food lover with a playful, somewhat naive temperament, Shen Shaoguang asked if she wanted to seriously learn cooking under Yu Sanlang or stay by her side. Without hesitation, A Yuan replied, "Of course, I’ll stay with you, Little Lady!"
Considering her passion, Shen Shaoguang advised, "Learning to cook might come in handy later?"
A Yuan shook her head. "I’ll just follow you, Little Lady."
Touched—after all, for a foodie to choose her over the kitchen was no small sacrifice—Shen Shaoguang relented. Following her around to learn hospitality, money management, and accounting would serve A Yuan well if she ever ran her own household.
A Chang was easier. With no grand ambitions and a steady temperament, he was content working diligently in the kitchen and happy to stay there.
Zhang Duo had been purchased specifically to accompany Shen and wasn’t much involved in the tavern’s operations.
The tricky one was Princess Yu San. Skilled in cooking, intelligent, and literate, his only flaw was his temper. If willing, managing a small tavern would be no issue for him.
Without looking up as he scored diamond-shaped cuts into a fish, Yu San stated, "I’m a cook."
Gazing at his handsome profile, Shen Shaoguang opened her mouth but said nothing. As a former retainer of Prince Wu, he had seen and experienced it all. If this was what he wanted, so be it.
Thus, besides staffing the new branch with five people, Shao Jie also assigned Shen Shaoguang’s old shop one manager and two servers.
Currently, all new hires were undergoing training at Shen Ji in Chongxian Fang.
The manager for the new shop in Qinren Fang was Xu Kai, a man in his late twenties with impeccable manners and a silver tongue. Rumor had it he had been the deputy steward of a county magistrate’s household. After the magistrate was impeached for misjudging a case and resigned in frustration to return to farming and study, his former entourage was sold off—Xu Kai among them.
The manager for the old Chongxian Fang shop was Chen Xing, a man in his early thirties who had previously managed a tea merchant’s shop. He embodied the affable, old-school merchant spirit. When the elderly owner passed away and his sons divided the family assets, a round of purges left Chen Xing jobless.
Both were capable, though neither stood out exceptionally. But running a small tavern didn’t require extraordinary talent—Shen Shaoguang herself was quite ordinary, so she was satisfied with both appointments.There was a new head chef named Fan Dalang, only eighteen or nineteen years old but with extensive kitchen experience. He had been picking vegetables in the back kitchen since he was seven or eight, started cooking at sixteen, and was skilled in both meat and pastry dishes.
The rest were young servers, all around fifteen to eighteen years old.
The two managers also had families, whom Shao Jie bought along with them: "They can help with cleaning in the backyard."
Shen Shaoguang met them—two capable women, both with children—and arranged for them to live in the rear residences of both shops. The new shop also had a rear residence: five main rooms, east and west wing rooms, and a small courtyard. Apart from the two main rooms and storage space reserved for Shen Shaoguang, the rest were already fully occupied.
After more than half a month of training and guidance, the new shop opened at the end of August.
As Shen Shaoguang and Shao Jie had anticipated, business at the new shop was excellent.
Standing by the counter with Shen Shaoguang, watching the diners, Shao Jie felt a pride akin to Emperor Taizong’s when he stood at the Duan Gate, watching the newly minted scholars file out and declaring, "All the heroes of the realm are now within my grasp!"
Seeing a young server carrying two plates of Chrysanthemum Fish, Shao Jie praised Shen Shaoguang: "This is all thanks to the young lady’s mural skills!"
Like the Chongxian Fang branch, the Qinren Fang shop also reserved a large Poetry wall outside—in fact, even larger than the one at Chongxian Fang—for guests with poetic inclinations to inscribe verses.
Shao Jie wholeheartedly agreed with this, as his friend Yang Jing had caught Li Xiang’s attention precisely because of the Poetry wall. Tales of scholars gaining fame through poems written in taverns were naturally good for business.
Shao Jie had assumed the Poetry wall would only become useful after the shop opened and customers flocked in. To his surprise, three days before the opening, the young lady stood before the wall and began "wielding her brush with bold strokes."
She was painting a sweet-and-sour Chrysanthemum Fish.
Shao Jie had tried this dish at the Chongxian Fang branch—fish scored beautifully, deep-fried, and drizzled with sweet-and-sour sauce, resembling chrysanthemums in shape, with a crispy, tangy-sweet flavor. Chrysanthemum Fish was indeed a fitting signature dish for autumn.
Shen Shaoguang held a small sketch she had prepared earlier, using faint charcoal lines to grid and mark points on the wall.
"To avoid distortion?" Shao Jie, though no artist, could guess her intent.
Shen Shaoguang nodded. "I’ve never painted a fish seven or eight feet long before." She then asked Shao Jie, "If someone rides past on horseback, even at a quick pace, they should still be able to see this fish clearly, right?"
Shao Jie nodded emphatically. "Don’t worry. Anyone walking down this street who isn’t blind will know our tavern serves Chrysanthemum Fish."
As she sketched the outline, Shen Shaoguang said to Shao Jie, "Blind folks needn’t worry—their noses are sharp. They’ll stop their horses at the scent and halt their carts at the aroma."
"So, we’re not letting a single passerby escape?"
"Naturally! Except those without money."
The two burst into laughter, feeling almost like highway robbers.
First, she outlined the fish in monochrome, then gradually layered on colors bit by bit. This single fish took Shen Shaoguang three days of leisurely painting.
Once some color was added, passersby began stopping to watch. Shao Jie, who had been lingering around the shop these days, explained on her behalf. The sweet-and-sour Chrysanthemum Fish, through its exaggerated, filtered artistic rendition, had already won its first wave of admirers.Shao Jie would occasionally step inside to check on the kitchen staff preparing ingredients and the waiters cleaning, then come back out to watch Young Lady Shen applying colors to the painting. She added touches of crimson to certain parts of the golden-yellow fish fillets, and somehow—perhaps from whatever she mixed into the pigment—the red took on a glossy sheen, as if it were real sweet-and-sour sauce.
Shao Jie couldn’t help but swallow his saliva—it was almost lunchtime.
Watching her meticulously apply color inch by inch, pausing now and then to shake out her wrist and rest her arm, Shao Jie advised, “This is too detailed. Customers won’t scrutinize it so closely. A general approximation would suffice.”
Shen Shaoguang shook her head. “This isn’t even that detailed. I’ve seen someone paint a bowl of rice, refining each grain one by one.” She was referring to a former colleague who used Photoshop to retouch and highlight grains of rice for an advertisement. At first, Shen Shaoguang hadn’t even recognized the pixelated mess—only when zoomed out did she realize, Oh, a single grain of rice. Zoom out further, and— Wow, a whole bowl!
Shao Jie nodded. “If this fish doesn’t sell seventy or eighty plates a day, it’d be a waste of your effort.”
Shen Shaoguang turned her head and grinned. “Young Master Shao, you’d better make sure we have seventy or eighty fish to sell!”
This was Shao Jie’s pride. “Don’t worry. I’ve secured a deal with the biggest fishmonger in Chang’an. As long as His Majesty in the palace has fish to eat, we’ll have fish to sell!”
Shen Shaoguang raised a paint-stained thumb in approval.
By the afternoon of the third day, with the grand opening set for the next morning, the large painting of the sweet-and-sour Chrysanthemum Fish was finally complete. Shen Shaoguang’s calligraphy, unlike her personality, was more robust than free-spirited—a style well-suited for seals or official documents, but not exactly ideal for this month’s promotional slogan...
When Shao Jie heard she intended to inscribe it with A Feast for the Eyes , he nearly collapsed with laughter.
Shen Shaoguang was baffled. Really? The Tang people were famously open-minded—between the suggestive tunes sung by courtesans, the steamy romances sold in bookshops, the mind-bogglingly creative erotic art in galleries, and even the poetry of high-ranking officials (not to mention some writings by noblewomen), far more risqué material was commonplace. This barely-even-a-euphemism idiom shouldn’t be that shocking.
Shao Jie quickly waved his hands. “No, no, I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just—” He burst into laughter again. “It’s just too mischievous.”
Shen Shaoguang concluded that while Tang-dynasty folks were worldly in some respects, their threshold for humor was suspiciously low.
The more Shao Jie pondered it, the more he appreciated the phrase. What had his Confucian teacher said about The Book of Songs ? Joyful but not licentious —he was surprised he even remembered that line. A Feast for the Eyes was fitting, playful, and just suggestive enough to elicit a chuckle without crossing the line. Perfect, absolutely perfect.
Shen Shaoguang was still deliberating over the calligraphic style. After some consideration, she settled on the solemn and dignified clerical script.
Though no expert, Shao Jie found her choice somewhat... unconventional. Running script might have been better?
Yet once she finished, upon closer inspection, it somehow worked—the opulent Chrysanthemum Fish, the stately clerical script, paired with the cheeky meaning...
Shen Shaoguang stepped back, squinting at the result. The contrast between the script and the phrase reminded her of Lord Lin delivering a deadpan innuendo.
Shao Jie nodded. “It’s like a dignified gentleman telling a bawdy joke—there’s a unique charm to it.”Shen Shaoguing tilted her head to look at him—his judgment was too sharp!
With such an eye-catching painting, the tavern opened its doors, and customers flocked in like clouds!
Pei Fei had been at odds with Princess Fuhui and hadn’t seen her for days. That day, after finishing his duties, he let his horse wander and ended up in Qinren Ward. At a glance, he spotted the giant fish and the four solemn, imposing characters beside it. He burst out laughing—who could be so mischievous?
Wait a minute... The sign read "Shen Ji"! Not just any Shen Ji, but the very same one from Chongxian Ward. The calligraphy was identical. And though the characters for "Xiuse Kecan" (Beauty is Feasting for the Eyes) were in a different script, the brushstrokes bore a resemblance. Ha! Had Young Lady Shen opened another tavern here?
Pei Fei stepped inside, and the layout confirmed it—it was indeed another branch.
He was particularly intrigued by the large table. Sitting with legs dangling—how carefree! Excellent!
Unfortunately, Young Lady Shen wasn’t there, only a young manager.
Flipping through the revamped menu, Pei Fei finally found his reason for coming to Qinren Ward—there was a Shen Ji here.
The next day, Pei Fei told Lin Yan about it and invited him to try the new Shen Ji in Qinren Ward.
Author’s Note:
① The joke about painstakingly editing images grain by grain comes from an article titled "Use These Little Tricks to Make Customers Remember Your Restaurant" published by an account called Huacanwang on JianShu (though I’m not sure if the author originated it).
————
Lin Yan: A Qi, the way we’re speaking now is what the Master called "joy without licentiousness."
Shen Shaoguang: Oh—so no licentiousness, huh...
Lin Yan cleared his throat and smiled faintly: Actually, one shouldn’t take the Master’s words too literally.
(Note: This mini-theater is purely for fun. "Joy without licentiousness" generally means happiness without excess.)
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