AGN -Chapter 430 Craftsmanship

After the meal at Zhao Cheng’an’s house, Qin Huai officially entered apprentice mode.

A true apprentice mode.

Master Zhou did not restrict Qin Huai’s working hours. As long as he arrived at the restaurant before 10 a.m., it was fine. Likewise, there was no fixed time to leave work either. If Qin Huai wanted, he could stay until 10 p.m., and Master Zhou would accompany him the whole time. Besides, Zhiwei Ju wasn’t lacking direct disciples who worked until 10 at night.

At that moment, Qin Huai finally understood the flexibility and freedom of Zhiwei Ju.

Flexible starting hours, freedom in getting off work. As for how many hours you actually worked each day, it all depended on your own attitude—and the master chefs could clearly see that attitude.

Qin Huai happened to be the kind of apprentice with plenty of dedication.

Apprentice Xiao Qin showed up every morning between 9:15 and 9:45, and left every evening between 9:35 and 10:15. Other than taking a one- or two-hour break in the afternoon to gossip with Zhao Cheng’an, he spent almost all his time following Master Zhou and practicing finger techniques.

He didn’t even waste the morning meeting.

The forty-five minutes of the morning meeting counted as meal time, so they couldn’t make pastries then, but they could cultivate aesthetic judgment for pastries—looking at beautiful dim sum and discussing exactly what made them beautiful.

Master Zhou’s teaching of finger techniques was comprehensive, from mindset to technical skill.

Technique naturally had to be taught. Finger work relied heavily on fundamentals. The most important things were steadiness and speed, along with an understanding of color coordination and coloring techniques.

This could be seen clearly just from the assorted fruit platter Master Zhou made that day. To make pastries vivid and lifelike enough to pass for real, every tiny detail had to be perfected. The grape leaves needed not only to resemble real leaves in shape, but also in spirit. Besides proper thickness and natural curves, even the veins, colors, and tiny black spots or blemishes that might appear on a real leaf had to be carefully considered.

For pastries that pushed finger techniques to the extreme, details determined success or failure.

To make pastries this delicate, one had to learn how to properly use all kinds of tools, including but not limited to small clips, tweezers, needles, handles, spoons, and various custom-made pastry tools.

Steady hands were extremely important.

Fast hands were equally important.

No matter how beautiful a dough figurine was, if it took three hours to make a single one, you still couldn’t be considered an outstanding pastry chef.

It was simply too slow. No customer could wait that long.

Fortunately, Qin Huai didn’t need to train those basics.

Even though he had never specifically practiced finger techniques before, his advanced finger-technique skill level was already there. Whether it was hand stability or tool usage, his foundation was already fairly solid.

That was also why Zhao Cheng’an had previously told him that finger techniques couldn’t be mastered overnight—it required time and gradual practice.

Qin Huai wasn’t starting from zero. He already had a foundation, and at first glance it even looked pretty good. But if he wanted to advance further and tackle high-difficulty work, then of course it would take time and patient refinement.

For a student like Qin Huai, Master Zhou had a different teaching method.

“Come, look at these jade-green cabbages. Don’t stop moving your hands—keep making your hedgehog buns. Just use your eyes to observe. Which of these four jade cabbages do you think is the best? Why? What problems do the others have?” Master Zhou placed a plate of freshly steamed jade cabbages in front of Qin Huai.

The so-called jade-green cabbage was a tiny and exquisite pastry shaped like Chinese cabbage, made from water-milled rice flour and rice flour. It belonged to the category of filled rice cakes and pastries, the same category as assorted fruit platters.

Compared to assorted fruit platters, jade cabbages were much less difficult, because people could tell at a glance that they were fake. They didn’t require such a high degree of realism.

They only needed to look beautiful, delicate, and like little toy figurines for children.

This kind of pastry required finger techniques similar to dough figurines, but taste was largely irrelevant. The ingredients were usually just simple water-milled flour and rice flour. Unlike dough figurines, they didn’t need fruit juice or vegetable juice for coloring. Their colors were usually very vivid, while the taste itself was mediocre—just the flavor of ordinary steamed flour dough.

Their main purpose was decorative.

Qin Huai was currently using tiny tweezers to pinch spikes onto the chubby hedgehog bun in his hands. Following Master Zhou’s gesture, he glanced at the jade cabbages on the plate.

The four jade cabbages differed in size and appearance. Some were fresher green, resembling tender cabbage, while others had a deep green color more like jade cabbage carvings.

One of them had poorly balanced colors—the gradient between the green leaves and the white stalk wasn’t blended properly. It looked as if the painter had run out of ink halfway through.

The folds of the leaves were also stiff. The parts that should have opened didn’t, and the parts that should have closed didn’t. At first glance, it looked like the free bonus item in a “buy three, get one free” promotion.

Qin Huai only needed one glance to know that the ugliest one had definitely been made by Su Qian.

Honestly, Su Qian getting scolded every day wasn’t undeserved. Among apprentices, he counted as excellent, but if he wanted to become Master Zhou’s direct disciple, he still had a very long road ahead.

Using the corner of his eye to monitor the chubby hedgehog in his hands, Qin Huai slightly slowed his movements and continued pinching spikes one by one while examining the other three jade cabbages.

There was no standard answer for jade cabbage pastries.

You could make them resemble real-life cabbages more closely, with richer color layers and more irregular leaves. They might not necessarily look conventionally pretty, but they would definitely have character.

Or you could deliberately make them look very fake—fake in the same way jade cabbage carvings displayed in museums looked fake.

The leaves could be astonishingly green, with poorly blended gradients and stark contrasts between white and green, yet somehow still beautiful, giving off a tiny and exquisite feeling.

“Master Zhou, I think this one is the best.” Qin Huai pointed at the fakest-looking one on the plate—the one that was obviously Zhao Cheng’an’s work.

According to Master Zhou, Zhao Cheng’an’s pastries carried too much “craftsman’s aura.” He rigidly followed examples and reproduced whatever others taught him, without adding any personal ideas.

But when that sort of “craftsmanship” was applied to purely decorative pastries like this, it became an enormous advantage—like adding wings to a tiger.

At least, that was how Qin Huai saw it.

When there was a model available to copy, of course you should copy it exactly.

Clearly, Master Zhou was not very satisfied with Qin Huai’s aesthetic sense.

“You think Old Third’s is better. Then can you tell which of the remaining two was made by Zhou Yan and which by Wang Jiayi?” Master Zhou asked.

Hearing that question, Qin Huai stopped moving his hands and stared at the other two high-quality jade cabbages for a long time. Finally, he pointed to one with a particularly fresh green color and especially well-done gradients. At first glance, it looked exactly like a miniature real cabbage.

If there was any flaw, it was probably that the leaf details weren’t handled perfectly. Every leaf looked a little too similar, lacking the true natural randomness of a real cabbage.

“This jade cabbage should be Sister Yan’s,” Qin Huai said. “Her color handling is much better than Brother Jiayi’s, but her finger-technique skills aren’t as strong, and she’s not as bold as he is. When it comes to tiny details like these, she’d rather use the safest method and repeat what she already knows than try something new.”

“As for Brother Jiayi’s, the details are extremely refined, but the colors are much weaker than Sister Yan’s. His cabbage is a bit too green. And he deliberately made one leaf short, like it had been snapped off, and even added yellow-black spots on the leaf. That’s obviously Brother Jiayi’s style.”

“As for Su Qian’s… I won’t comment. At his current level, making jade cabbage pastries is honestly asking too much of him.”

Hearing Qin Huai’s remarkably accurate critique, Master Zhou felt both gratified and helpless. With visible confusion in his voice, he asked: “You can analyze all this perfectly clearly. You understand each of their styles very well. So how is it that you still prefer Old Third’s jade cabbage?”

Master Zhou practically had the words written across his face:

Is this really your aesthetic taste? You actually like pastries that are all craftsmanship and no soul?

“Brother Cheng’an’s pastries are very polished,” Qin Huai said. “I know his pastries have a heavy craftsman’s aura and lack personal soul, but for this kind of pastry, I think his looks better. There are no obvious flaws, nothing you can really criticize. Isn’t that what makes a pastry beautiful?”

“It’s a beautiful pastry,” Master Zhou said earnestly, “but it shouldn’t be the kind of pastry made by a pastry chef with ambition.”

He pointed at all the hedgehog buns Qin Huai had just made.

“Like these hedgehog buns you made. Are they beautiful? Absolutely. From the eyes to the overall shape to every single spike you pinched out, there’s not a single flaw to pick at. But don’t you think these hedgehog buns are beautiful in the same way products from an assembly line are beautiful?”

As he spoke, Master Zhou directly took the hedgehog bun Qin Huai was working on from his hands.

“Even the hedgehog bun you made while watching and multitasking alongside me still ended up exactly the same as the previous ones.”

“The first batch of hedgehog buns you made were all perfectly neat in shape and size. I told you to make some with different characteristics—some smaller, some bigger. But your ‘smaller’ and ‘bigger’ versions were still identical to one another. I asked you to make something different, not to switch molds and mass-produce another batch of identical models in different sizes.”

Seeing Qin Huai standing there blankly, Master Zhou sighed helplessly.

“Ah, if I’d known you’d develop the same problem as Old Third, I wouldn’t have let him mentor you in the beginning. He only taught you for a few days and already led you astray.”

Qin Huai weakly defended himself:

“This probably has nothing to do with Brother Cheng’an. I’ve always been like this when making pastries. My imitation ability is especially strong.”

“As Tan Wei’an put it, he suspects I drank two fewer mouthfuls of Meng Po soup, so I didn’t completely forget my previous life.”

“Having strong imitation ability is a good thing,” Master Zhou said, “but it’s also a fatal flaw.”

“Do you know why Old Third was once considered a famous genius when he first started learning from me, but now has somewhat faded into mediocrity?”

“Because he wanted to learn everything, so he never mastered anything completely?” Qin Huai guessed.

“Not entirely. His biggest problem was that at the beginning of his training, he relied too heavily on his talent and endlessly imitated others, until it became a bad habit.”

“Every apprentice imitates. Learning to make a pastry well always begins with imitation. Nobody can avoid that.”

“But if you want to create pastries that truly belong to yourself, you have to discard imitation and stop relying on it too much. When I taught Zhou Yan and Wang Jiayi, I never encountered this kind of issue. Looking back now, it’s probably because their talent was far inferior to yours and Old Third’s. They never experienced the thrill of advancing by leaps and bounds purely through talent, so they never became dependent on it.”

“But you two are different. You’re both too talented, and too reliant on that talent.”

“You once told me that when your Master Cao taught you knife skills, the first thing he taught you was to forget.”

“At the time, I found that strange. It is a good method, but it’s far too risky and troublesome. Normal people wouldn’t teach that way. Your Master Cao’s personality didn’t seem radical enough to start with such an extreme approach.”

“But now it seems your Master Cao was better than me—and understood you better than I do. That really is the only method suitable for you.”

Qin Huai: ?

“Huh?” Qin Huai was dumbfounded. His mind filled with only one thought:

No way, not this again.

Back when his knife skills were only beginner-level, forgetting everything and starting over had been relatively easy.

But now his finger techniques were already Advanced level.

How was he supposed to forget that?

What, was someone going to knock him unconscious and give him amnesia?

Besides, finger techniques relied more on muscle memory than conscious memory. Even if his brain forgot, his hands might still remember.

Seeing Qin Huai completely bewildered, Master Zhou explained:

“I know it’s difficult. But if you want to improve further in a short period of time, if you want to correct all those bad habits—however many you still have—and avoid ending up trapped in a dead end like Old Third, then this method is still possible while it’s not too late.”

“You don’t want to become like Old Third a few years from now, do you?”

Those words from Master Zhou were extremely heavy.

Of course, he wasn’t saying Zhao Cheng’an was incompetent. But Qin Huai clearly understood Zhao Cheng’an’s current problem, and he also knew that unless Zhao Cheng’an somehow received a System and suddenly achieved enlightenment, it would be very difficult for him to break through.

Then Qin Huai suddenly realized—

Wait, Zhao Cheng’an doesn’t have a System. But I do.

After thinking for a moment, Qin Huai said: “Master Zhou, I actually understand what you mean.”

“You mean that blindly imitating others is very useful in the early and even middle stages. But once someone wants to pursue something higher and better, imitation becomes an obstacle on the road forward.”

“And Zhao Cheng’an and I both developed this habit. It’s harder for us to correct than for ordinary people. That’s why our early path in cooking was smooth, but breaking through later becomes much harder than it is for others.”

Master Zhou nodded in satisfaction.

“Then what do you mean by starting over? There’s no way I can completely forget my finger techniques.”

“You don’t need to forget everything. Your fundamentals are already solid. Those things can’t be forgotten even if you try.”

Qin Huai: ?

“Then what am I supposed to forget?”

“Aesthetics.”

Qin Huai: ??

Now Qin Huai’s head was truly full of question marks.

Aesthetics???

You can forget aesthetics?!

No, wait—

Master Zhou, are you saying my aesthetic sense is bad?

Qin Huai nearly wanted to pull out all his elementary school, middle school, and high school art assignments to prove himself.

His aesthetic sense was actually pretty—

…Alright, his drawings were terrible.

But his taste should still be decent… right?

“Your aesthetic sense carries too much craftsman’s rigidity,” Master Zhou said.

“These past few days, no matter what I asked them to make, you always preferred Old Third’s work. If I’d asked them to make assorted fruit platters or peacock displays—things requiring creativity and artistic taste—that would be one thing. But what I had them make were relatively rigid, basic-style pastries.”

“The others’ pastries may have flaws, but they clearly possess more soul. Yet you don’t like those. You prefer Old Third’s flawless-looking pastries—the kind that follow instructions perfectly, as though they were copied directly out of a textbook.”

“Technique cannot easily be reshaped, but aesthetics can.”

“Of course, technique still needs practice too. Do you know why I’ve had you practicing these basic pastries these past few days? I wanted to see whether your fundamentals had any obvious issues.”

“And now it seems your fundamentals are fine, but your aesthetics have major problems.”

As he spoke, Master Zhou pulled out a thick stack of books—seven or eight in total.

Qin Huai focused his eyes and read the titles:

Outline of the History of World Aesthetics
The Journey of Aesthetics
Step-by-Step Guide to Making Exquisite Pastries
Aesthetics
Aesthetics and Art
The Freedom of Beauty
The Grand Compendium of Pastry Making

The thickness of the books made Qin Huai’s vision darken.

“Read them carefully. Every morning during the meeting, tell me your thoughts after reading.”

“As for daily training, we’ll continue as usual. You’ll keep practicing these basic pastries, and when I have them make difficult pastries, you’ll critique them.”

“Back then, Old Third also read these books.”