The Butcher’s Daughter’s Windfall Gourmet Food Stall

Ding Baozhu was a modern food blogger who died suddenly while editing videos late at night. Upon opening her eyes, she found herself in the body of a girl with the same name in the Great Hua Dynasty. The original owner was an eighteen-year-old peasant girl from the Ding family in Xiangshan Village. She had suffered a severe head injury after throwing herself against a wall in protest of an arranged childhood betrothal to the son of a local hunter named Xu. The original owner had been in love with a carpenter’s son who rejected her, leading to her desperate act. Ding Baozhu, now inhabiting the body, accepted her new reality and decided to make the best of her situation.

The Ding family was a large, multi-generational household divided into three branches. The matriarch, Madam Jiang, favored her eldest and youngest sons while despising the second branch, to which Ding Baozhu’s parents belonged. This prejudice stemmed from Madam Jiang’s belief that the second branch lacked male heirs, as Liu Ping had only given birth to daughters. Ding Baozhu’s father, Ding Hong, was a skilled butcher who occasionally brought home offal and meat for his family. The household dynamics were tense, with Ding Baozhu’s eldest aunt, Wu Tang, openly hostile toward the second branch, while the youngest aunt, Yao Dan, showed kindness and curiosity toward her niece.

After waking up, Ding Baozhu displayed a dramatic change in personality. Gone was the willful and rebellious girl; in her place was a calm, sensible young woman who readily agreed to the marriage with the Xu family. Her parents, initially worried and confused by her sudden compliance, were relieved that she no longer posed a threat to her own life or the family’s social standing. The betrothal gifts from the Xu family, which included high-quality fabric, tea, and wild geese, had already been accepted, making a return of the engagement impossible without significant financial loss and social shame.

Ding Baozhu sought to establish her independence and improve her family’s living conditions through her culinary skills. In the kitchen, she prepared a meal using a pig stomach her father had brought back. She created two dishes: stir-fried pig stomach tips with pickled radish and a cold salad of shredded stomach with homemade mustard sauce. The meal impressed her family and neighbors, showcasing her expertise and earning her respect. Her youngest aunt, Yao Dan, assisted her and was delighted by the novel flavors, particularly the pungent mustard sauce which reminded her of spicy cucumbers sold in town.

While her family enjoyed the meal, the first branch, led by Madam Jiang, grew envious. They were subsisting on a meager diet of mixed grains and wild vegetables. Madam Jiang plotted to appropriate some of the dried meat from the Xu family’s betrothal gifts, rationalizing that as the matriarch, she had the right to use them. Meanwhile, Ding Baozhu used her early morning trip to Xiang’an Town with her father to observe the local market and food culture. She explored the streets, tasted various foods, and gathered information about prices and ingredients, planning to leverage her knowledge of modern cuisine to create new business opportunities.

During her exploration, Ding Baozhu encountered a handsome young man with a distinctive red scar on his face who was selling captured yellow sparrows. She recognized the potential value of such game meat and noted his presence in her mind. Back at the butcher’s guild, she reunited with her father and enjoyed a meal of noodles, further observing the local economy and social interactions. The chapter ended with Ding Baozhu beginning to formulate a plan to use her culinary talents to change her fate, while navigating the complex web of family rivalries and societal expectations in this ancient village.