The Ghost Chef

The Ghost Chef is an urban novel by sports commentator and screenwriter Duo Ling, published by Lijiang Publishing House, with a preface and recommendation by television host Wang Han. The story takes place in a bustling, crowded city: Tong Ming and Li Xiaoqin are a couple striving to make it in a foreign place, but the pressures of reality, their parents' opposition, and their differing choices drive the relationship toward separation. Li Xiaoqin becomes entangled in a whirlpool of greed and disappears, while Tong Ming stays alone in the city, living as a bachelor, busying himself between the kitchen and work, trying to fill the emptiness in his heart with trivial daily routines. Because of his love for food and cooking, he meets Bao Erding, known as the "Master Chef." Bao Erding's culinary skills are extraordinary and awe-inspiring; after a lavish feast, the pasts and fates of the two men begin to unfold. With the kitchen as its stage, the novel interweaves food, love, and city life, capturing in the steam and smoke of cooking the loneliness and rootlessness of ordinary urban people, and the indescribable taste of emotional division and the split between hometown and elsewhere.