“Chu, you have to help me with the invitation today.” As soon as Auguste got in the car, he started to turn his head and said to Chu Xiao.
“I can’t guarantee anything else, but I can take you to Chairman Zhou’s office right now. You can talk about the invitation in person.” Chu Xiao spread out his hands and revealed an expression of helplessly wanting to help.
“Hey, this is really strange. In the past, too many people were invited to this kind of cooking exhibition. Now, I have to do it myself.” Auguste said helplessly.
“There’s no other way. There are too many people coming this time. I heard that some politicians are investigating this matter and are preparing to come.” Chu Qi said.
“Moreover, this is also the first time that Yuan Zhou has held a personal cooking exhibition.” Chu Xiao continued.
“Although I’ve never seen it before, your videos have left a deep impression on me. I’m looking forward to participating and observing Yuan’s knife skills.” Auguste said excitedly.
“But you don’t have an invitation yet.” Chu Xiao said without any mercy.
“Chu, we’re still friends. You can’t hurt me like this.” Auguste glanced at Chu Xiao unhappily. Although he was already over 60 years old, he was still very young.
“Alright,” he said. Chu Xiao shrugged and then didn’t say anything.
That’s right. Chu Xiao and August were discussing about the invitation letter to Yuan Zhou’s personal cooking exhibition. Normally, it was a very honorable thing for such an invitation letter to be handed to August, who had a high status and seniority and was also a famous chef from overseas.
However, Auguste did not have any.
The reason was quite simple. After Zhou Shijie took full responsibility for Yuan Zhou’s personal cooking exhibition, he began to plan a series of things such as publicity.
After the publicity was in place, many people came to ask for the invitation first. First, it was some of the big shots in the domestic cooking industry. They acted as soon as they heard the news and were the fastest.
If Zhou Shijie didn’t say that there were still 50 invitation cards left for the overseas chefs, these people would have snatched all 200 invitation cards.
After all, the famous cuisines in China were divided into eight major cuisines. There were also some famous chefs who weren’t included in the eight major cuisines, such as Colin and the two brothers, Liu Xi and Liu Jian. Since they didn’t have the chance to attend the tea, wine, and snack party held by Yuan Zhou last time, they had been keeping an eye on Zhou Shijie. One could easily imagine their speed.
Even the Huaiyang cuisine master and the inheritor of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, hang Tian, only had one invitation in his hand.
Therefore, out of the 150 invitation cards, Zhou Shijie only secretly left two for his two beloved disciples, Liu Tong and Li Minghui, and the rest were all taken away by those people.
As for the other disciples, they didn’t have any. If Zhou Shijie hadn’t prepared his own invitation card in advance, he might have even been robbed of his. Even so, those people with invitation cards were still asking if they could bring their disciples to attend the event.
It was already so with 150 tickets in China, not to mention the 50 tickets overseas. Overseas, Yuan Zhou had been to Thailand, Japan and France.
Because of the three-star chefs, Dean and Gabriel, the invitations from overseas were quickly snatched up even if they were outdated.
For example, Gabriel, Dean, and Mr. Alfreya, who had always been the second best, had managed to get the invitations from France because they were in China.
What was more strange was that these invitations had been snatched away by some big shots who had attended the Asia-Pacific Exchange meeting. Yes, those were big shots. Since they came to ask Zhou Shijie personally, he naturally couldn’t refuse them and could only give them one invitation.
As a result, all the invitations that were distributed overseas were gone.
The rest of the tickets were given to his friends and partners by the venue provider, Wu Yungui. Most importantly, Wu Yungui was a sleazy person. He had asked Zhou Shijie for eight tickets a long time ago.
These friends and business partners were carefully selected by Wu Yungui. They were the kind of people who were so busy that they flew abroad every day and were basically the big bosses of foreign business partners.
In Wu Yungui’s words, only in this way could he experience the essence and deliciousness of Yuan Zhou’s food.
Therefore, Wu Yungui gave the remaining seven to these people, except for the one he kept for himself.
Under such circumstances, ogyust, who had been sitting in a fishing boat and thinking that he would receive an invitation, naturally did not receive one until two days before the cooking exhibition began.
In the end, he had to call Chu Xiao personally to find out that no one had sent him an invitation card. Therefore, he hurriedly booked a plane ticket and went to Huaxia with Chu Xiao, preparing to ask for an invitation card from Zhou Shijie personally.
“You should know that the invitation is sent to the invitee. How could it be gone before it’s even sent?” Auguste could not help but mock again.
“It can’t be helped. This is his personal cooking exhibition.” Chu Qi said.
“Well, I can understand, but they should have sent me an invitation. After all, I can still cook even though I’ve retired.” Auguste mumbled.
Looking at August in such a manner, Chu Xiao felt both helpless and a little proud. How could these arrogant French people come to China in person for an invitation? now, he had done it and so had Yuan Zhou.
“As expected of the opponent I acknowledged.” Chu Xiao thought in his heart.
On the way to Zhou Shijie’s office with August, Chu Xiao saw some people on the other side, who were as calm as August two days ago, but now they were running around anxiously.
This person was none other than tengyuan Jiayuan, who claimed to know Chinese cuisines better than Chinese people.
That’s right. Tengyuan Jiayuan didn’t receive the invitation either. But dashi xiujie, who believed that he would surpass Yuan Zhou in the future, did.
This wasn’t strange. After all, dashi xiujie had been keeping an eye on Yuan Zhou’s cooking skills every day ever since he returned to Japan after the Asia-Pacific cultural exchange meeting. Therefore, as soon as he received the news of the personal cooking exhibition, he came to visit Zhou Shijie in person and then got the invitation.
But Fujiwara Jiayuan was different. In Japan, he was crowned with the title of Jiayuan. Regardless of his status, he was already there. Usually, he would attend state banquets of the same level. Although he cared about Yuan Zhou very much, he couldn’t keep an eye on Yuan Zhou every day like dashi xiujie.
When he found out that Yuan Zhou was preparing to hold a personal cooking exhibition, he had assumed that Zhou Shijie would personally give him the invitation letter.
However, Zhou Shijie hadn’t sent him an invitation until now. After asking around, he found that Zhou Shijie didn’t send him an invitation at all. At that time, he became puzzled.
“Baka, this Chairman Zhou Jun is too incompetent. He didn’t even send me an invitation.” Tengyuan Jiayuan was sitting in his study room. He put down the phone in his hand and couldn’t help but swear.
“Even dashi-san has it, but I don ‘t.” When tengyuan Jiayuan said this, he had completely forgotten the difficult process of how he got it that dashi xiujie had said.
“No, I have to ask Zhou Jun personally.” Tengyuan Jiayuan took a deep breath, then picked up the phone and continued to make a call.
This time, he called Zhou Shijie directly.
……