The average housing price in Ancheng had already exceeded 20,000 yuan per square meter. Wen Qian wanted to buy a small two-bedroom apartment, so she needed to save up at least 250,000 yuan before she could afford to buy a house.
She had already been looking at houses last year, but she realized that prices in central areas had not dropped recently, while prices in surrounding areas had fallen quite a bit.
More importantly, the news about unfinished pre-sale housing from when she first graduated left a deep impression on her.
So Wen Qian hesitated. She could not afford the central areas, but housing prices in the third and fourth ring roads were falling. She did not dare to buy pre-sale housing, so second-hand housing was popular.
Therefore, Wen Qian started to wait and see. Fortunately, she was still young, so it would be better to buy later rather than buy now and regret it.
It was fine if she did not buy a house. Having money in her hands meant she did not need to worry.
And so there was now a scene of people stockpiling goods.
The more than 200,000 yuan she had in her hands originally made her feel quite reassured, but after buying a ton of rice and a ton of flour at the wholesale market, over 8,000 yuan was gone.
Then after buying oil and salt, she had already spent over 10,000 that day.
At this rate, Wen Qian felt that the money she had was far too little. Too little, pathetically little.
Money still had to be spent on necessities, so Wen Qian drove home. While waiting at a red light, she saw the sign for the fruit shop next door.
Fruit had always been expensive. Even buying wholesale was very costly. It would be great if she could grow it herself.
Thinking about growing it herself made her think of seeds and fruit saplings.
When Wen Qian was in college, she often took the bus past a place lined with shops selling seeds. At that time, she still found it strange - why were there shops selling seeds in the city? Now when she thought back, there should have been a seed wholesale market.
In rural areas, her grandparents bought seeds in small packets at the farm chemical and seed shops at the rural markets. Back then, the seeds they bought the most were just rice seeds.
They rarely spent money buying other types of seeds at home. They usually kept some vegetable seeds, although the quality of their self-retained seeds was not very good.
Now Wen Qian remembered that seeds were also very important stock. She should store some.
No matter how much disaster occurred, as long as people were alive, they would need food. And at times like that, seeds would be extremely important.
So Wen Qian started searching shopping rankings in her mind, stocking up on goods based on order of importance - buying the important stuff first so that if she ran out of money later and could not buy less important stuff, it would not matter.
After returning home, Wen Qian quickly ate dinner and started searching online for the old seed shop's address. As expected, it was a seed wholesale market, so she took note of the market's location to go buy seeds when she had time.
In addition to buying seeds suitable for An Province's climate, she also needed to buy crop seeds suitable for other climate zones in China, whether tolerant of cold, drought, damp or high altitude areas.
It was hard to predict what the future climate would be like, or where she might end up living if she survived, so it was best to prepare a variety of seeds in advance.
Since Wen Qian would not go buy them on location personally, she could only shop online. At times like this, it was not about comparing three shops - she had to avoid fake seed sellers.
It just so happened Wen Qian followed a balcony gardening enthusiast online, who advised buying directly from the official websites of seed companies.
If only buying small amounts, she could also buy packeted seeds online.
Wen Qian also found some online shops that other followers had bought from and tried out, planning to get familiar with different varieties first before adding them to her cart.
That night, Wen Qian placed an order online for sanitary pads.
In the past, she would stock up half a year's supply at a time. Now Wen Qian planned to stock up 30 years' worth.
Born in an era with sanitary pads, Wen Qian could hardly imagine how to cope if she had to return to an environment without them. Ancient and pre-modern women had various methods that Wen Qian was unwilling to adopt.
Having periods really was troublesome for women in Wen Qian's opinion.
Although troublesome, hoping that human females would evolve to stop having periods altogether seemed too difficult.
In the end, Wen Qian spent 2,800 yuan on buying sanitary pads, choosing a relatively well-reputed brand with reasonable prices that did not advertise too aggressively.
Wen Qian somehow felt that for products with excessive advertising, a large part of the pricing went towards advertising fees. So the more a product was advertised, the more reluctant she felt about buying it, suspecting the price would definitely be higher.
Of course, this was just her personal guess - she did not actually know if it was true.
After buying those, Wen Qian realized she was missing side dishes to go with the staples, so she placed an online order for 10 boxes of pickled mustard stems and 10 boxes of kongming da tou pickled Chinese cabbage, spending a total of 500 yuan.
These were two of her favorite pickled vegetables, but making them herself would definitely be very troublesome, so she opted to buy readymade ones instead.
Wen Qian considered that relying solely on what she had stocked up so far would stave off hunger, but would not provide balanced nutrition.
So she purchased some Vitamin ABC supplements online too - the kind that came in 100-tablet bottles for 2 yuan each.
After browsing online for so long, she discovered such pharmaceuticals were very affordable to buy online. If she went to a pharmacy, the staff would always push the 100-200 yuan brands instead. Even if she insisted on asking for the 2 yuan ones, they would stand in her way, rambling on about them being out of stock or disparaging them until she gave in, as Wen Qian had experienced recently at the pharmacy downstairs.
After spending 500 yuan on assorted vitamins, Wen Qian also thought of other common medicines to keep on hand, like cold and flu medication, anti-inflammatory medication, gastrointestinal medication, antihistamines, etc.
Wen Qian held off on purchasing them immediately, wanting to first compare prices and manufacturers.
Iodine, hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, gauze, medical forceps, scissors, surgical sutures and such also went into her shopping cart.
Once done with all this, she already felt very tired, both physically and mentally, so she fell asleep quickly.
And so she dreamed again, this time of heavy snow.
Compared to previous fragmented dreams, this dreamscape was more unified - just the sound of the wind howling, the sound of snow falling, the sound of branches snapping.
Nothing but heavy snow and harsh cold. When Wen Qian woke up, she felt as if she had emerged from hibernation.
Perhaps because the dream was so focused, after sleeping, Wen Qian did not feel tired at all upon waking. She got up and went to work smoothly.
If working hard previously was to accumulate money to buy property, Wen Qian now felt very conflicted.
On one hand, work seemed meaningless - what was the point of working when she could not see a future? She felt like slacking off and could calmly face work-related urging and conflicts.
On the other hand, she needed the salary to purchase goods and stock her personal space, so it was good to work as long as she could.
The two emotions tugged at her, but her work quality did not slip. She took things slowly, one by one, even earning her boss's praise.
Perhaps precisely because Wen Qian did not care, fear, or worry anymore, work somehow no longer caused her much trouble. Her colleagues said she had started to become cooler and more carefree in how she handled matters.
She did not know about being carefree or not. But the chill she felt every day after work while stocking up - now that pierced her heart.
Such paltry sums of money, yet so many things she wanted to buy.
If she were rich, she could just wave her hand, not looking at prices but only quantities and weights, getting people to deliver goods to her doorstep - now that would be wonderful!
