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Yu Yimei was eighteen when she took over Another Tavern. The place was barely staying afloat.\nShe had a born cook's feel for flavor and heat. Her deft knife work soon made her name in Hangzhou, a city teeming with taverns. Her parents were still alive then, and had found her a suitor whose family seemed a good match for their own. She invited him to the tavern and cooked him a meal herself. Once the table was cleared and he had left, she turned to her parents. "I'm not marrying him."\n\nThe match came to nothing. Business boomed.\nHer raw fish came in slices thin as snowflakes. Even the simplest seasonal fare, spring bamboo shoots or autumn watershield, became something exquisite in her hands. She was just as deft with King Qian's Four-Delight Cauldron, a grand royal dish that called for lavish presentation and a sure hand at the stove.\n\nShe was quietly making northern techniques her own, too, constantly finding new ways to put them to use.\nHer rule was absolute: "Only the day's first catch. If it isn't fresh, it's free." That promise soon helped make Another Tavern a favorite with the city's rich and powerful.\nYears later, the man she'd turned down gambled away everything he owned at a gambling den in the foreign quarter. Only then did people realize how shrewd she'd been. Asked how she'd known, she slowly wiped down the knife she used for fish and said, "People show their true selves at the table. Share a meal with someone, and you'll know all you need to."