Mooncakes, Flower Cakes, Egg Yolk Pastries
Lin Mo curled up on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, and typed a reply on her phone: "Of course not. Don't you feel cold?"
Jian Qing quickly sent a voice message, her voice a little shaky from sniffing: "Cold, really cold! I'm on a temporary business trip to G City today, and right now I'm rushing to the mall to buy thermal underwear and a thick down jacket."
Lin Mo: "If I remember correctly, today is Sunday."
Jian Qing complained: "That doesn't stop my exploitative boss from sending me on business trips."
Lin Mo asked: "When will you be back?"
Jian Qing's voice carried a hint of fatigue: "Won't be back anytime soon. In a couple of days, I'll fly from G City to Indonesia. There's a project there that needs us to work overnight on the audit."
Indonesia was near the equator, with a hot and humid climate. Lin Mo felt relieved: "Then you don't have to worry about the cold. But I heard Southeast Asia is a bit chaotic. Stay safe, and remember to bring some medicine and Daily Necessities from G City."
"OK, I brought an extra-large suitcase. The project is said to take a month, so I'm dodging the cold. Don't worry, we'll be buried in work at the Chinese company building. When would I have time to go out?" Jian Qing's voice became lively again: "I'll bring you guys some civet coffee specialties as souvenirs. Look forward to it, hahaha."
Lin Mo was touched but declined. She'd let Jian Qing enjoy the civet coffee herself. Even though the coffee beans excreted by the Indonesian civet cat are the most expensive coffee in the world, she'd politely decline.
Lin Mo checked the weather forecast: "Looks like Indonesia has cooled down too."
Jian Qing: "Yeah, my colleagues there say we're lucky to have missed the heat. The highest temperature now is 25°C."
But the system had warned of global extreme cold. The equator would also get cold, though the situation would certainly be much better than in S City. If she asked Jian Qing to bring a down comforter, she'd definitely refuse.
Lin Mo simply asked for the address of her hotel in G City and quickly ordered a set of down comforter, wool socks, down pants, and a cold-weather face mask online. Better to be prepared.
Then she closed WeChat and opened Dingdong Grocery. She selected the vegetable section and scrolled down, adding lettuce, romaine, baby bok choy, spinach, sweet potato leaves, chives, eggplant, loofah, and more to the cart.
Then fruits: vitamin C-rich oranges, limes, strawberries, blueberries...
These were all things she liked to eat, so she had to get them.
The shopping cart was full and looked impressive, but Lin Mo frowned slightly. This pile of stuff looked lively, but it wasn't even a fraction of the winter cabbages that Bai Jie's family stored.
S City's grocery apps sold vegetables in too small quantities—one jin per pack, some as little as 300g. Relying on this for bulk purchases was unrealistic. No wonder Bai Jie had suggested going to the wholesale market.
These were only enough for occasional cravings. She still needed to go to the wholesale market.
But taking a taxi to the wholesale market? She probably couldn't bring back that much stuff anyway. Maybe she should rent a car.
She checked the estimated delivery time—it would be forty minutes. Lin Mo decided to pull out her camping cart again, sling her backpack over her shoulder, and use the time to restock at the entrance of the neighborhood.
500 meters away, there was a fresh food shop. Lin Mo bought dozens of boxes of beef and lamb rolls, plus a large basket of free-range eggs. The egg seller, seeing her generosity, even offered to deliver:
"When I close up, I can take them to your place by tricycle, so you don't have to carry all this and risk breaking things on the way."
Lin Mo agreed without hesitation: "Sure! Then give me two more big baskets. I'll pay a deposit now. I live in the neighborhood next door."
She then went to the next-door snack shop, bought 100 jin of assorted soft small cakes, 20 jin of cashews and almonds, filled her cart to the brim, and closed the lid.
Finally, she stuffed her backpack with soda crackers, beef jerky, and luosifen (snail noodles).
She timed it perfectly. As soon as she got home, the Dingdong Grocery delivery arrived.
She put the beef and lamb rolls in the freezer, and the leafy greens and fruits into the storage cabinet to keep them fresh. Other food could be stored at room temperature, scattered on the carriage floor. She'd organize them once she got shelves.
Lin Mo sat on the sofa and scrolled through her shopping history: water, rice, noodles, grains, oil, meat, seasonings, vegetables—all bought some, but definitely not enough to last three or four months.
No wonder Bai Jie from Northeast China would always complain when reading novels: "Real stockpiling means hoarding by the ton. My family eats a ton of vegetables during Winter Nesting." This was indeed not enough.
Lin Mo: ...She couldn't drive a tractor to the village market to buy a few tons of winter vegetables. Besides, the train couldn't hold that much.
She wondered how long this extreme cold would last. She'd go to the vegetable market again tomorrow. For now, she'd shop online. The logistics hadn't been affected by the cold yet, but who knew when they'd be cut off?
Lin Mo decided to take advantage of the still-functioning express delivery to buy some high-calorie, space-saving foods. If vegetables ran short, she could make do with vitamin tablets and effervescent tablets.
As an online shopping expert, targeted buying wasn't difficult.
She first focused on local specialties from other regions, mainly high-calorie mixtures of sugar and oil: 300 pieces of Yunnan rose flower cakes, 300 internet-famous egg yolk pastries, ten boxes of "Beijing Sanhe Daoxiangcun 16 flavors 3-jin pack," five boxes of "Chengdu Imperial Pastry Shop Gift Set," and five boxes of "Liuzhou Snail Noodles."
These things had a long shelf life in low temperatures. Ordering a large quantity of specialties mixed in different packages wasn't conspicuous, since many people bought lots as gifts. This way, they could travel back to S City empty-handed.
She didn't forget mooncakes, that evil cultivator.
Mooncakes are a mixture of sugar and oil, not easily perishable, and very high in calories. The old-style Weixian heavy-oil mooncakes, also called five-nut mooncakes, weighed one jin each. She paid without hesitation and bought 100, totaling about 100 jin.
She remembered at school, such a big mooncake had to be shared by several people. But with five-nut filling, often no one wanted to share—people waved their hands at the mention of five-nut. Unfortunately, most people didn't know that these century-old shops' heavy-oil mooncakes were actually delicious. The shop she ordered from had long queues around the Mid-Autumn Festival.
"Let me just add some assorted regular-sized mooncakes. Twenty jin should be enough." Egg yolk lotus paste, chocolate coconut, date paste—these flavors were okay; she'd loved them as a child. And since the Mid-Autumn Festival had just passed, mooncakes were on clearance.
With food and drink taken care of, next came warmth. Lin Mo went to Taobao's warmth section and bought one each of a long-fluff wool blanket, a smart temperature-controlled washable electric blanket, and an electric throw blanket for curling up on the sofa.
She couldn't skip heat packs. She directly ordered 1,000. As soon as the order was placed, customer service messaged: "Dear, we also have moxa and ginger heat packs that last 12 hours. If you order together, you get 10% off~"
Lin Mo decisively said: "Then add another 2,000."
Heat packs were cheap and didn't take up much space. They worked whether stuck to your body or stuffed into your bedding. It was always good to have more.
After buying these, she got up and went to the bedroom to check her warmth reserves: in the closet were two four-season quilts, but both were light and not very warm. Two cotton quilts were brought from her hometown in the north, decently thick. There was also a down comforter she'd bought on Double Eleven, spread on the bed. At the head of the bed was a soft silk quilt she'd used before the temperature dropped.
These were only enough for temperatures around 0°C.
Down comforters were light and warm, and layering them wasn't heavy. Inner Mongolian wool blankets were windproof and insulating. So Lin Mo ordered two more thick goose down comforters and two Inner Mongolian wool blankets, plus two sets of matching bedding for easy washing.
After finishing these tasks, Lin Mo looked around, her gaze gradually falling on the old air conditioner in the room. A sense of crisis rose.
She got up, grabbed her computer, opened DeepSeek, and searched. A line appeared on the screen: S City's historical lowest temperature was -12°C, occurring in the winter of 1893.
But such low temperatures were once-in-a-century. So S City's water pipes were generally designed for -10°C, and new neighborhoods had pipes resistant to -30°C. The power grid design standard was for 10-15mm ice coating. If sustained low temperatures were combined with wet snow, the probability of local power outages was high.
The neighborhood she lived in had buildings constructed between 1990 and 2005. How could they withstand extreme weather? Lin Mo wrapped her blanket tighter, her fingertips still a bit cold. Her heart pounded:
Just how cold would the system's claimed "global extreme cold" be? -20°C shouldn't count, right? That was a common temperature in Northeast winters. But what about minus forty degrees, or even minus sixty?
If it really came to that, there would definitely be water and power outages, heavy snow blocking roads. If government rescue couldn't reach, humans would be trapped on isolated islands, truly freezing and starving to death.
No wonder the doomsday theory had trended. Lin Mo stared at her messy shopping cart, her mood growing heavier.
She suddenly wondered if her preparations were really enough to cope with this disaster.
Author's note: None.