Chapter 59.2: Use Big Sis as Scapegoat Again
Jiang Xia nodded and pointed her chopsticks at the stir-fried bean sprouts with shredded pork.
“These bean sprouts aren’t normal. They’re far too large. Normally, you can’t get them this big just by soaking them in water. They were probably grown with chemicals. Most likely, they used sodium metabisulfite and 6-benzyladenine. The former is a bleaching agent primarily used in industrial production, while the latter promotes plant growth. Both have a certain degree of toxicity. Consuming too much can cause poisoning. Even though small amounts may not produce obvious symptoms of poisoning, long-term consumption can damage the liver and kidneys and may even cause cancer.”
As she spoke, Jiang Xia pointed her chopsticks at the preserved-egg tofu as well.
“This tofu is the same. It’s far too white. It doesn’t look like it was set with gypsum. They probably used an industrial dye to color it. The dye is all mixed into the tofu. Eating it would damage the liver too.”
“What?”
Jiang Xia would never lie. Hearing this, Xu Changsong looked from the bean sprouts to the tofu, and his face immediately went pale, then flushed red.
Both dishes looked perfectly appetizing, with excellent color, aroma, and flavor. If Jiang Xia hadn’t pointed it out, he never would have imagined that these ingredients had been prepared this way.
Industrial bleach and dyes in food meant for human consumption… Their conscience must be completely rotten!
He took a deep breath.
“Da Rong!”
Before his superior could say another word, Rong Zhenhai shot to his feet.
“I’ll get someone over here to investigate right away.”
With that, he turned to leave.
“Oh, and one more thing.”
Jiang Xia stopped him. The tofu wasn’t particularly easy to identify, but chemically treated bean sprouts had a distinctive flavor that was much easier to notice. Anyone willing to use ingredients like these couldn’t be trusted not to pull similar tricks elsewhere.
Remembering what she’d overheard when they arrived, she continued, “I heard a customer just now say that the spicy pepper fish was incredibly addictive… There might be something added to that, too. Give the narcotics squad a call and have them bring over some equipment to test for morphine.”
“What?”
Rong Zhenhai’s expression changed instantly.
“This restaurant actually dares to put dr*gs in their food? Do they have a death wish?!”
“They definitely wouldn’t dare put pure dr*gs in it.”
Jiang Xia sighed. “But poppy pods or poppy powder? They really might. Restaurants make their money by getting customers to come back again and again. If they can make people mildly dependent on the food, they’ll have plenty of repeat customers.”
“They can actually do that?”
Rong Zhenhai stared at Jiang Xia in astonishment.
This was outright poisoning!
How could a restaurant be this unscrupulous?
Even Sun Erniang’s famous bun shop only chopped you once. This place was basically cutting you with a dull knife, little by little!
He didn’t dare be careless for even a second.
“I’ll go borrow the phone from across the street and make the call!”
They actually dared to put poppies in their food.
This restaurant really had no desire to live!
Xu Changsong’s expression was just as ugly.
He was in a terrible mood.
It had taken considerable effort to finally convince Expert Chen and Jiang Xia to come along. He had carefully chosen a private restaurant, hoping to let them sample some local specialties and leave them with a good impression.
Instead, not only had the restaurant failed to leave a good impression, it had exposed its own rotten backside.
He had never been this thoroughly humiliated in his life.
“Uh… Food safety really is quite a serious problem these days.”
Chen Yongyi slowly put down his chopsticks, trying to ease the awkwardness.
“I’ve also heard that counterfeit goods are pretty common. I once saw someone dyeing corn silk and selling it as ‘facai’. I’ve also seen people adding flour to lotus-root starch, and feeding chickens and ducks water and bran to make them weigh more.”
As he recounted the things he’d encountered himself, his eyes swept over the bean sprouts and tofu on the table. He still couldn’t help adding,
“But those are just cases of counterfeiting. If you look carefully, you can usually tell something is wrong. As for using chemical agents to make food look fresher and more appealing… this is honestly the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
“It’s not just you. I’ve never heard of anything like this either.”
Xu Changsong shook his head slightly, still unable to wrap his mind around it.
“How do people even come up with this stuff? Aren’t they afraid of sending someone to the hospital?”
“They probably just stumbled across it while experimenting.”
Jiang Xia said, “I’m using the chemical names, but the actual substances are pretty common. They’re just bleach and dye. You can buy them at the supply and marketing cooperative. They were originally sold so ordinary people could dye fabric and wash their clothes themselves. But then these counterfeiters figured out they could use them to make food look prettier, too. If it looks better, they can sell it for more. And if nobody eats it and nothing seems wrong on the surface, well… might as well sell it.”
As she spoke, Jiang Xia paused and looked toward Chief Xu.
If her memory was correct, over the thirty years from 1978 to 2008, food-safety problems would only become increasingly serious, to the point where practically no city could avoid them.
Although some TV dramas made a criminal-investigation detachment chief look like a minor figure, that wasn’t actually the case. A detachment chief could be responsible for a very broad range of matters, and food safety fell within that scope as well. At the moment, they could even participate directly in its administration.
If Chief Xu could pay a little more attention to this, he really could help safeguard the dietary health of Quzhou’s citizens to some extent.
With that in mind, Jiang Xia continued by giving a few more examples.
“Anyway, people who counterfeit food are extremely good at adapting to local circumstances. Whatever they have on hand, they’ll find a way to put it in. If millet turns grayish, they’ll use pigment to dye it yellow again. If dried tofu doesn’t look bright enough, they’ll add turmeric to color it. If noodles look gray, they’ll add whitening agents to make them look whiter… In short, they’ll do absolutely anything.”
“And those two additives are actually among the less harmful ones. There’s something that’s genuinely poisonous called hydrogen peroxide. It’s originally used to sterilize and disinfect seeds, so it’s somewhat like a pesticide. The concentrated stuff is extremely toxic, and even contact with the skin can cause chemical burns.”
“Guess what? Because it’s so corrosive, it can also bleach food. Some people whose brains are a little too ‘creative’ use it to bleach meat that’s already starting to rot, or expired dried tofu and things like that, then process and sell them again. If ordinary people eat too much of this stuff, it can burn the esophagus and, in severe cases, even cause esophageal cancer.”
“An even more serious problem is pesticide residue. Some insecticides are highly toxic without having a particularly strong smell. Some farmers don’t wait for the pesticide to break down before taking their vegetables to market. They just sell them directly, which can cause quite a few people to be poisoned and hospitalized.”
“Food safety is actually very important.”
Jiang Xia summed it up. “It’s just that there isn’t a specialized department to investigate this right now. Nobody’s really in charge of it. No wonder things are such a mess.”
Xu Changsong listened to everything in a daze.
He felt like he’d truly had his eyes opened today.
What Expert Chen had mentioned, including pesticide residues, wasn’t particularly unfamiliar. He’d actually been cheated once when buying a chicken for the New Year.
But what Jiang Xia had described?
He was hearing about it for the first time.
People could actually do things like this? And there were this many ways to do it?
‘How could there be so many ways to scam people?’
“That’s absolutely right. We need to crack down on this and investigate it thoroughly.”
Xu Changsong agreed. As he thought about how he would definitely have to look into this when he had the time, he also felt that Jiang Xia knew an astonishing amount about this sort of thing.
He hesitated, started to speak, stopped himself, then finally couldn’t hold back.
“But Jiang Xia, your hometown, Changning City… Are there really that many vendors selling counterfeit food?”
Huh?!!
The moment she heard his question, Jiang Xia’s mind went blank.
She had already been waiting for Chief Xu to ask how she knew all this, so she could smoothly pin all the blame she knew about onto her big sister again.
How come he wasn’t following the script at all?!
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go!
He was supposed to ask why she knew so much about this stuff, and how she even knew exactly what materials were being used. Then she could answer him!
But this question…
It was ‘far too reasonable’.
After all, all this knowledge of food adulteration had to come from somewhere. Regardless of where she’d learned it, someone had to have actually done these things for her to know about them. And if he then thought about where she’d spent most of her time, it was only natural to conclude that food adulteration must be rampant in Changning City.
‘Ah…’
She suddenly felt like she was smearing her hometown’s reputation.
“Not really.”
Jiang Xia silently swallowed a mouthful of blood and desperately tried to salvage Chief Xu’s impression of her hometown.
“Some of this I learned from chatting with my roommates when I was studying at university in the provincial capital. And my dad’s village wanted to build a small food-processing plant, so he asked my older sister to look into it. She happened to ask people in the same line of work about the relevant technology, and that’s how she learned about these things.”
“There aren’t many street vendors in our city yet. We don’t even have a proper market, so how could there be that much food adulteration?”
Upon hearing that there weren’t many such cases—that food fraud wasn’t particularly widespread—
“Ohhh, I see! So that’s what happened.”
Xu Changsong nodded repeatedly.
So all sorts of information from different places had simply come together. No wonder she knew so much. He’d jumped to the wrong conclusion.
It was just…
How had her sister managed to find out about such obscure things?
There were so many methods of adulterating food, and the techniques were all apparently the latest ones.
Then he thought about how Jiang Xia had just suggested that the restaurant chef might have added poppy pods to the food.
Xu Changsong found it even more peculiar.
While they waited, he added, “We brought the police dogs too. They’re already searching the kitchen. If there’s anything there, they’ll sniff it out.”
Xu Changsong’s mood immediately took another turn for the worse.
“Captain!”
It hadn’t even been a few minutes when an officer came over carrying a plastic bucket.
“These bean sprouts smell strongly of chemicals when you get close to them. I was helping out in the kitchen. And this is after they’ve already changed the water twice.”
Everyone instinctively glanced at Jiang Xia.
Xu Changsong’s face darkened even further.
But before it could darken completely, another officer came running over, holding a cloth bag and leading a completely black narcotics detection dog.
“Captain! We hit the jackpot! There’s so much poppy powder! More than six hundred grams!”
There was no need to wait for the test results anymore.
Captain Ren struggled to keep the corners of his mouth from turning upward.
‘Don’t laugh. Chief Xu’s face is already darker than the bottom of a cooking pot!’
“Ahem. We’ve already detained the restaurant manager and chef,” Rong Zhenhai hurriedly said. “The narcotics squad can handle this from here. I’ll go investigate the poisonous bean sprouts and tofu in a little while.”
“Expert Chen, you haven’t eaten anything yet. I’ve already booked another table at the state-run hotel restaurant. Why don’t we go there instead?”
“Yes, let’s go to the state-run restaurant.”
Xu Changsong’s expression finally returned to something resembling normal. He nodded in agreement.
“The food there is trustworthy.”
The service might be lousy, but at least they didn’t poison you.
They had to eat eventually. Otherwise, Xu Changsong and the others would undoubtedly keep thinking about the incident. Chen Yongyi didn’t object either and readily agreed.
The group headed over to the state-run restaurant.
Rong Zhenhai had clearly made arrangements in advance, probably calling in a few favors. They were given a private room, the dishes came out quickly, and nobody else came in to disturb them.
At long last, the farewell banquet ended with everyone leaving satisfied, host and guests alike.
During that time, everyone exchanged their personal contact information. Xu Changsong tried once again to persuade Jiang Xia to stay, and Jiang Xia, after much “reluctance,” agreed to remain for another three days.
After those three days, she really had to leave. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have enough time to deal with the situation on the train once she got back.
Xu Changsong could only accept the reality with great regret.
So, over those three days, Xu Changsong hurriedly gathered suitable cases from all the various district bureaus from the past year, starting with the most recent and working backward. He summoned all the eyewitnesses and had Jiang Xia draw more than twenty composite sketches in one go.
Only then did he reluctantly send two officers to escort Jiang Xia back.
Jiang Xia had really wanted to refuse, but unfortunately, she couldn’t win that argument. She had no choice but to leave with two extra tails following behind her.
The gesture turned out to be completely unnecessary.
When they reached the train station and she was about to board, a conductor responsible for checking tickets looked at Jiang Xia’s ticket, then at her letter of introduction.
Her eyes gradually began to light up.
She restrained her excitement and lowered her voice.
“I remember now! You’re that ‘Book of Life and Death,’ aren’t you?”
Oh my goodness, her luck was incredible! She’d actually gotten to meet the legendary person herself!
She was indeed as young as everyone had said. She didn’t even look as old as the conductor’s younger sister!
Huh?!
Jiang Xia carefully studied the conductor’s face.
She was absolutely certain she’d never met her before.
‘No way.’
It had only been a few days. Had her reputation really spread that far already? Even a conductor who had never met her could recognize her?
Wait…
It seemed like her prestige points had surged again recently. She was already getting close to maxing them out again!
She figured that besides her colleagues in Quzhou City, the railway police must have contributed quite a few points as well.
‘Uh…’
Was she going to unlock another skill on the train?
‘Heaven, please.’
This time, can you at least give me something normal?!
<< _ >>