After getting home, Wen Qian put the yogurt in the fridge and then cooked lunch for herself.
Her roommates were not at home. There was a big window in the kitchen. Wen Qian listened to an audiobook while preparing food, with the sound of cars outside as background noise.
In city life, utilities like water, electricity and gas were very convenient, but you had to pay for them. If they were cut off, you would panic.
Wen Qian's thoughts had drifted to the scenario of her going back to her rural hometown and burning firewood.
As young people moved to the cities to work, those with children also brought their kids to the city for education. The countryside was really left with just the elderly.
As the elderly population gradually declined, the villages became more and more deserted.
When Wen Qian was under 10 years old, most families were still in the village. So there were always issues over the ownership of resources like water and cow dung.
At that time, conditions were poor. The fields and mountains collectively allocated to each household were important sources of income.
If they could be exchanged for money, they did. If not, keeping them for personal use was good too.
Now the deserted mountain villages, even during New Year when people returned home, they stayed in the village for a shorter time. After all, some had made a home in the city.
Those without a home in the city had to work. With a stable job, it was basically impossible to go back home on the 15th day of the 12th lunar month, and return to work on the 15th of the 1st lunar month.
Everyone lived busily.
The fruit trees in the village no longer had children coming to stealthily pick fruit. The fallen leaves on the mountain piled up layer upon layer, and there weren't many people raking them back as fire starter.
The small paths overgrown with weeds were difficult to traverse.
Without human intervention, the woods grew increasingly lush. Places you could previously walk through were now inaccessible.
Similarly, there were more wild chickens, rabbits, weasels and badgers compared to the past. Even wild boars roamed wider.
These were scenes she saw every year when she went back to check on the house.
After dinner, Wen Qian started working overtime again. The things she had ordered online successively arrived. Wen Qian had to move them from the delivery station back home, then disinfect them. After opening the packages and inspecting the items, she put them away.
Just the sanitary pads took up many boxes to move. In the end, she borrowed a small trolley from the delivery station.
She disinfected the things first before taking them back in batches.
Wen Qian increasingly felt like a little squirrel hoarding acorns, or a small ant preparing to move house.
Still, this sense of fulfillment and security gave her some comfort. The more thoroughly she prepared, the better.
After taking away a batch of deliveries, Wen Qian went to the pharmacy with her health insurance card. There wasn't much money left on the card, but she had to use it up. She picked some reliable brand medications in the store, all with clearly marked prices. Even if they weren't cheap, she still bought them.
The same medications, Wen Qian took two bags full back home.
The polite pharmacy staff were very curious. They thought because the girl was buying non-prescription drugs in such diverse applications, she must be trying to use up her money.
As long as she wasn't asked, Wen Qian wouldn't explain. She took her things and left.
Medications were very important. Clearly the money on the insurance card was insufficient. Wen Qian would continue searching online to buy more medicine.
That night, Wen Qian was in her room opening deliveries with scissors, organizing the things she bought, roughly grouping similar items together.
She checked that she had bought everything on her list, then marked them as received.
Luckily there weren't big issues with the items. If there were problems the seller could just resend them.
As for collapsed cardboard boxes, Wen Qian planned to tidy them up and sell them for recycling. Every little bit counted.
Seeing the number of awaiting packages decrease gave Wen Qian a sense of accomplishment. She decided to buy more things.
Finally Wen Qian mentally reviewed the stockpile she had bought, very satisfied, and went to wash up for bed.
Lying in bed, Wen Qian was still adding items to her online shopping cart on her phone.
Toilet paper was needed too. She planned to buy very cheap regular toilet paper, to get as much paper as possible for the limited money.
When using a search tool online, she came across bug out bags and first aid kits. She was very interested in their contents list.
Emergency supplies like power banks, window breakers, fire starters, compasses etc. Wen Qian felt it would be more cost-effective to buy these things separately.
She then selected some packaged seeds from foreign companies, opting for smaller quantities and more variety.
After randomly browsing for a while, she came to the section for rural living supplies. As many things she'd bought were raw materials, they required processing.
She didn't know if she would have the chance to live an electrified life in future. And there wouldn't be market stalls to cube pork bones for her after a natural disaster.
She had to do these things herself, so she needed tools.
Some non-electric tools that could still save labor.
She ordered 10 cheap but durable cleavers online, 10 pots, totaling 700 yuan.
And manual meat grinders and blenders. Without electricity in future, if she wanted to mince lean meat into filling, she wouldn't have to keep chopping with a knife.
Wen Qian also ordered several small stone grinders and stainless steel hand-cranked grinders online.
She thought of the water boiling tools commonly used in her rural hometown. After an online search, she found the rural wood-burning water buckets for sale that she remembered. They were cylindrical sheet metal buckets with a hollow column in the middle. You put it on the ground and lit a fire with sticks in the column to boil water. Very convenient. Deciding they were practical, she bought 8.
Then on the related item page, Wen Qian saw a new stainless steel heating furnace for rural areas. It was like a mobile stove made of stainless steel, also functioning as a heater.
Placed indoors with a flue to vent smoke, it could burn wood or coal for heating. The metal rings on top could open to put pots for cooking. It could also boil water when not cooking.
There were matching stainless steel round tables, very sturdy and durable. The cheapest were just over 300 yuan each.
It was a multifunctional top choice. So Wen Qian placed an order for 4 furnaces, and also 5 extra linings as replacement. The total came to 2,000 yuan.
She could already envision herself spending winter in a cozy cottage in the countryside.
What a wonderful invention the internet was.
The delivery address she put was for an empty factory building in her company's industrial park.
Wen Qian now realized there was an unrented and unfurnished factory building next to her workplace. It was empty inside, and colleagues occasionally parked their cars in it when it rained.
Now she had a place to receive large deliveries. She could save on warehouse fees.
After that, Wen Qian bought a box of lighters. Considering the quality of cheap lighters, she subsequently bought a lot of fire starters and magnesium strips, as well as a batch of candles.
Having bought these, Wen Qian thought of other things she might need, and went to buy two tents and farm sheet plastic.
She then ordered several cheap fishing rods online. The rods themselves were secondary, there was plenty of bamboo that could substitute at her hometown. She was more focused on buying fishing line, hooks, floats and sinkers.
While she was at it with water related items, Wen Qian simply bought lifejackets and a small inflatable boat together, keeping it under 1,000 yuan.
