PFC Chapter 3685: The Mercury Age (5)
Chapter 3685: The Mercury Age (5)
Chapter 3685: The Mercury Age (V)
Schiller did not try to convince Peter, because Peter was not being too hard-working or too frugal, but white Americans were really like that. They seemed to have completely lost their taste buds during the long industrialization era. They could taste how delicious a dish was, but the bottom line of what they could accept as unpalatable was also surprisingly low. This led to a serious lowering of the median food standard, and the daily diet of most people seemed awful to people in other continents.
They also don't pay much attention to eating. Breakfast and lunch are just two bites, which are just to maintain life signs and make people lose their appetite.
Peter should have had a taste for food since he started high school, but he didn't mind eating dry bread in the lab after graduating from college. Although he loved Schiller's meals, he also enjoyed frozen foods and pre-prepared meals.
In contrast, Xu Shangqi cursed white fans in his short video account. From the content of his account, we can see that he was very happy when he went to Hong Kong, but he was as sad as a bereaved family when he returned to the United States. Most of the short videos in the United States were in a trance state of being hungry.
Don't say that the income here is high. Even if you have money, you still have to have time to go out to eat. When you are busy, you still have to eat the terrible white food, and you don't say a word.
Schiller had studied in the United States in his previous life and lived there for a long time, so he had some understanding of this. Xu Shangqi, a pure Chinese who had never left the country, traveled to the United States, which was equivalent to a life sentence. If he could not be transferred back to Asia to work, he would have been sent to jail.
Given the differences between the two men, Schiller could only think it was a genetic difference. It seemed that white people’s taste buds were just not as sensitive. But he was also puzzled: If that was the case, how could Italian and Spanish cuisine be explained?
Schiller bought fresh asparagus, artichokes, lettuce, and olives, some tomatoes for ketchup, fresh beef and cheese, two dozen eggs, and finally a variety of plums, because he planned to make his own sour plum sauce to go with the roast goose.
And Peter really did as he said, he didn't spend a penny here, and when he was checking out, he was frightened when he saw the numbers jumping on the screen, and in the end he turned his head away and stopped looking.
The food here is indeed expensive, Schiller cannot deny it, but the quality is certainly very good. Everything is fresh, even the eggs are better than elsewhere, and the beef is of visibly high quality. It's okay to spend a little money, just think of it as a sacrifice for your mental health.
After the shopping, Schiller realized that it was too early to arrange with the middleman to pick up the goods. So Peter suggested: "Let's go to the supermarket my aunt often goes to! There are some good things there. Doctor, maybe you can also buy some daily necessities."
Schiller thought about it and agreed. The supermarket he just visited was a food supermarket, which did not have daily necessities such as toilet paper. He would not go to a high-end supermarket to be cheated for such daily necessities, so of course the cheaper the better.
So Schiller followed the navigation Peter sent him and drove to a supermarket in Queens. Although it was still early, the parking lot was almost full because it was the weekend. It took them a while to find a parking space.
“It’s hard to park here,” Peter said. “My uncle would park in a lane up the block east, and we’d walk here. That’s why my aunt had the cart.”
They walked in together. The decoration of the supermarket was obviously not as good as the previous one, but it was more lively. Various customers were pushing carts to and fro, most of them were families: an older child sitting in the cart, holding a younger child in his arms, and even a family of three generations came out together, surrounding the shelves to study the prices.
Peter was going to buy materials for making raspberry pie, and Schiller followed him and observed the prices in this mass supermarket. After all, the prices in Queens are much cheaper than those in Manhattan and the suburbs where Schiller originally lived. It can be said that it is the place with the lowest cost of living.
After entering, Schiller was amazed. There were two rows of containers against the wall selling frozen foods. Looking at the dazzling array of frozen foods, Schiller had to admit that he might have been a little narrow-minded before, because he found that many of these frozen foods were made in China and were typical Chinese dishes.
Schiller knew that China was busy building high-speed trains in the sky. The speed of the trains in the sky was much faster than that on the ground. Basically, it could be seen as a rocket coming sideways, and it came over in a flash. The trade volume between the two sides was also increasing year by year, but he didn't expect that it would be popularized to food so quickly.
Schiller saw sweet and sour pork ribs, sea cucumber with scallions, Hainanese chicken, clay pot rice, and spicy chicken in the frozen food. This was obviously not American Chinese food, and many of the dishes were difficult to make. Schiller couldn't help but pick up two boxes to look at them, and the more he looked, the more excited he became.
These frozen Chinese meals are indeed more expensive than frozen fast food, but because fast food is so cheap, these frozen pre-prepared meals are not particularly expensive, at least much cheaper than Chinese restaurants. Some dishes are not available in Chinese restaurants, which makes Schiller very hungry.
So, when Peter came back from buying baking powder, fruits and other things, Schiller's shopping cart was already full.
"Doctor, why did you buy so much again? Didn't you say you don't like frozen food?"
"That's different," Schiller said, shaking his head. "It's Chinese food. It's definitely better than some frozen pizza."
"But the quantity is small, the price is expensive, and it doesn't seem to have that much energy." Peter picked up a few boxes and looked at them. "And imported products don't accumulate points, so it's really not cost-effective."
Schiller didn't care. He stacked up the boxes of frozen Chinese food and said with great satisfaction: "The dividends of the times have finally fallen on me. If it tastes good, I will recharge a stored-value card..."
They went to the daily necessities area and bought some toilet paper, kitchen paper towels, dishwashing sponges, etc. Schiller observed again that the prices of these daily necessities were not very expensive, and they could also accumulate points, which was quite cost-effective.
Although being near Central Park is good, Queens is not bad either. Schiller thinks that if the nursing home is to move in the future, it should move to Queens.
But there is a downside, which is that Queens is too populated. When Schiller was shopping in the supermarket, he met many fans who wanted autographs. They took a long time to come out, almost exceeding the time Schiller had agreed with them.
They drove to Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn. Schiller usually bought seasonings and other things at the large Chinese supermarket here, and the owner of the goose and duck store he met this time also lived here.
They drove to the neighborhood, then turned several turns into an alley, and finally stopped at the end of the alley, next to a wall filled with waste.
As he turned around, Peter's expression became complicated. When he saw the wall with the hole, he covered his forehead and sighed.
"Doctor, are you sure you're here to buy food?" Peter looked at Schiller with a puzzled look on his face and said, "Why does this look like a contraband transaction???"
"In a sense, they are also contraband," Schiller shrugged. "These are the geese and ducks raised by the boss himself. I'm sure he doesn't have a breeding license, and he certainly hasn't paid taxes. They perfectly meet the criteria of 'illegal and not circulated normally in the market.' And I also ordered some medicinal herbs for removing fishy smells, which are definitely not imported through normal channels."
"That's exactly what I'm amazed at," Peter said, giving a thumbs-up. "If people of other ethnicities had this ability to evade customs and tax authorities, they would definitely use it to sell drugs, but the Chinese use it for food."
"Don't be silly, Peter," Schiller said as he pulled cash from his pocket. "Don't you know that the biggest money laundering organization in New York is Chinese restaurants? This is a model that three generations of presidents have been unable to change."
Schiller rolled up the cash and passed it through the hole. The other party asked a question in Cantonese, and Schiller replied in Mandarin. The other party stuffed two large black plastic bags through the hole. Schiller opened them and checked them, tied the pockets tighter, and passed the other part of the cash. The other party made an "OK" gesture along the hole, and Schiller left with the bag.
"I hope we don't get checked on the road," Peter said, making the sign of the cross on his chest. "If I were a policeman, I would definitely pull out my gun when I saw these two black plastic bags."
"What are you thinking? I'm not going to go back with these two things like this. Come on, let's find a restaurant to deal with it."
Peter felt a little confused again, but Schiller took him around the neighborhood like a familiar figure and then into a Chinese restaurant.
Schiller knew the boss here. He greeted him, handed him the black plastic bag, and said, "Just pluck the feathers and clean them. No need to blanch them. I want to make roast goose."
The boss smiled and said a few words in dialect, and took it to the kitchen to cook. Schiller looked at Peter and asked, "You didn't eat breakfast this morning? Let's have lunch here first and try the dishes in the evening."
Peter was already starving. He stared at the pale menu on the wall without blinking, and ordered several dishes very skillfully in Cantonese with an English accent.
The two ate while waiting for the poultry to be processed. While waiting for the food to be served, Schiller also tutored the English of his boss's fat Chinese nephew who came to visit during the summer vacation. Originally, he was just teaching simple grammar, but he found a test paper in his textbook. Peter and Pikachu excitedly took the test, but ended up being confused.
Schiller took a look at the test paper and found that it was from a bilingual international school in Shanghai, so he didn't stop them. As a result, the kid's questions made Peter, a native American, full of questions.
After all, Peter went to a very ordinary public high school. Although he was very good at scientific research, he couldn't learn English grammar without specialization. In particular, a lot of knowledge about roots and affixes came from other languages, which could not be explained clearly in a short time.
Fortunately, just as the man and the mouse were scratching their heads, the food arrived. Peter used eating to cover up his embarrassment. Schiller looked at the group chat on his phone. He hadn't checked it all morning, but there were hundreds of messages in the "Long Live Singles" group. These people in SHIELD really don't work at all.