Chapter 151
Before leaving with the little chicken cakes, Jian Chu posted a photo in the communication group set up by Zhuchong. He also posted the address of the stall and the selling price, asking those who wanted to buy to bring their own lunch boxes. They were unable to provide take-out packaging, and it seemed that the production conditions for both wrapping paper and plastic bags had not yet been restored, so they were unable to provide this service.
Because there are a lot of mosquitoes outside, and this sweet thing is naturally very attractive to mosquitoes, so Mu Nan specially cut a piece of gauze cloth for Jian Chu and asked him to cover it with it, so that others can see what is being sold, and it will not be spread out in the air and contaminated by mosquitoes.
Although the mortality rate of parasitic diseases has been reduced as drugs are gradually introduced, it is still difficult to find a cure and many people die from the disease, so it is better to be careful, especially with this kind of food that is ingested.
The workers who dug wells took private jobs after finishing work every day. They said when they took the jobs that they were divided into two shifts. It just so happened that one shift this week ended at 2 o'clock. They would come only after they finished their government work, and would work from 2:30 to 6 o'clock in the morning. They had to be back before the sun got too hot. So when Jian Chu went to set up the stall, the well diggers had not arrived yet, and there was no need to keep anyone at home, so they all left.
The public security in the small square is actually pretty good now. What happened that day was caused by the hatred created by the stall owner himself. Otherwise, there was no deep hatred and they wouldn't have resorted to violence. What's more, there is a police station right next to the small square. Unless there are special circumstances, most people would not dare to cause trouble.
I heard that when the small square market first opened, some people took the opportunity to rob. They thought that since there are no cameras now, they would just rob and run. Besides, the environment is so chaotic, and both the police force and the legal system are not as good as before. If they go into the lawless area of the outer city, they will definitely not be found.
Unexpectedly, there were cameras installed here. The police didn't even look for them. They just locked the camera and then the ID card after facial recognition. Without the ID card, you can't do anything in the residential area, and you can't use the money in it. Unless you have a lot of wealth and have been bartering with others or leaving here to live as a wild man in the mountains, otherwise you have no choice but to surrender yourself.
Those who think that all kinds of disasters are coming, the end of the world is coming, and all order and systems no longer exist, think too simply about the entire country. There was a tribal system in the era of eating raw meat and drinking blood, let alone now.
So for now, as long as there is no deep hatred, most people dare not commit crimes. Not to mention anything else, you must swipe your ID card just to use water. If you commit a crime and are on the run, you won’t even be able to drink a sip of water.
But even so, Mu Nan and the others would not let Jian Chu set up the stall alone. They would need a few more people no matter what. Especially since they were selling food like small cakes. The sweet aroma that emanated from them was tempting people to commit crimes all the time. So of course it would be safer with a few more people.
There are not many people selling food in the market, but there are still some, such as some things that can be bought in online shopping malls, such as insect meat, rice, flour, etc. Some people are quick to grab them, and then want to sell them at a high price, so they will move a small table to set up a stall. Those who can't grab the products and have no food at home can only come out to buy them at high prices, but apart from these, there are not many new and novel things.
When Jian Chu put out the egg cake, the people visiting the market had not yet been attracted. The stall owner who was closer to him was the first to be attracted. He was even surprised and said, "You still have the conditions to make bread now? Your craftsmanship is pretty good."
Jian Chu put out the price tag and said with a smile, "Egg cake, made with real eggs, 70 cents each, do you want to buy one and try it?"
After hearing what he said, many people were attracted and asked: "Eggs? Made of real eggs?"
Jian Chu: "Look at the color yourself. Can this color be achieved without adding eggs?"
Others: "Just add some pigment."
Song Jia couldn't help but say, "What are you saying? Where can we get pigments at this time? We went to Qinghe specifically to collect the eggs. Qinghe's farm mainly raises chickens, so there is a place to collect eggs, but I don't know where to get pigments."
This is true. The person who said it just now also felt that his brain was out of control. Now eggs can be manipulated if there is a way. Pigments are even more scarce than eggs. Smelling the long-lost sweetness, it is impossible not to be greedy. No matter whether you like sweets before, few people can resist this temptation now.
Someone tried to negotiate the price, but Jian Chu's price was already very cheap. According to the current scarce market, an egg could be sold for at least two or three yuan. His flour and sugar were not easy to get. Although one egg could make several egg cakes, 70 cents each was the floor price. After all, it was the only one in the market.
Most parents with young children were willing to spend a little, even if it was just one, to give it to their children. Singles, with no family burdens and stable jobs, were in good condition, so they could buy two or three at a time without too much pressure. Those with big families, even if they were very greedy, finally didn't want to spend the 70 cents. 70 cents could buy several buckets of water, or even a bag of worm meat to eat for two days, which was more cost-effective than the egg cake that was gone. After repeated hesitation, they still couldn't bear to spend it.
There are many people who are reluctant to give up, but there are also many people who are willing to give up. With the previous live broadcast and the notification in the bamboo insect group, many people soon went straight to the egg cakes. Those who have some conditions buy them at two yuan each, and the cheaper the better.
Seeing more and more people gathering together, Qin Huai, who was originally standing at the back responsible for security, also came forward to help. Jian Chu collected the money, Song Jia maintained order, and Mu Nan was responsible for packing egg cakes for people.
But there were too many noises, and it was so noisy. One moment they were shouting, "Fill it for me quickly!" the next moment they were shouting, "I don't want this one, I want a bigger one!" Some people also kept pushing their way to the front, making Mu Nan dizzy and his hands tangled.
Qin Huai walked over with a smile, patted Mu Nan's shoulder and said soothingly: "Take your time, don't rush. I'll count and you can install it. When you're done, give it to me."
Mu Nan hurriedly did as he was told. If Qin Huai asked for three, he packed three; if he asked for two, he packed two. He handed the packed lunch boxes to Qin Huai, who then handed them to the customers. Mu Nan had a good memory and was not like Mu Nan who would get flustered when being yelled at. He distributed the purchased egg cakes smoothly, and the business at the stall soon became smooth.
The stall was opened at 12 o'clock, and all the eggs were sold out at 1:30. Jian Chu hadn't counted the money yet, but when he saw that even the egg pancakes he tried to make were sold out, he was so happy that he put one arm around Mu Nan and the other hand on Jian Chu: "We'll settle the accounts when we get back! If this business is profitable, we can accumulate a certain number of eggs and sell them every once in a while!"
Mu Nan wiped the sweat off his body and said, "It's so hot. I'm really not cut out for business. If it weren't for my brother, I would have been so confused that I couldn't tell who got how much and to whom the lunch boxes were given."
Jian Chu said: "It's okay, you'll be fine after a few more times. When I first started setting up a street stall, I was so flustered that I lost a lot of money. It's normal."
Song Jia had to remind: "Flour and sugar are not cheap to buy now, and the materials may not be sufficient if you want to buy more." The main reason is that they may not be available in large quantities now.
Jian Chu said, "I've thought about this too. So these things can't be limited to egg cakes. We can make some with more eggs and less flour, such as egg rolls. Didn't we have some glutinous rice before? If you see any place selling glutinous rice, remember to collect some for me. Have you ever eaten Jiangmi Tiao?"
Mu Nan shook his head. This was the first time he had heard of this thing. When he was a child, his snack was chocolate jelly beef jerky. He had never eaten what Jian Chu mentioned.
Song Jia just thought that this thing sounded a little familiar: "What is it? What is it made of?"
Jian Chu said, "It's also a kind of snack. It seems to be more common in the north. In the past, in the 1970s and 1980s, glutinous rice noodles were a snack for many children, and there were also steamed cakes. If you count them, there are really a lot of things that can be made. I'll go back and think about the production process carefully. I'll find a notebook to write it down and try it slowly later."
Mu Nan asked: "Have you decided to develop this business?"
Jian Chu sighed, "These are the only skills that can be activated by external conditions. Let's give it a try first. Besides, we don't have the conditions to develop this matter in the long term. Anyway, it's enough to make a living for now. Also, lend me your rooster in a few days. We need to increase the meat supply at home."
Mu Nan: "No problem, I'll ask my brother to catch one and send it to you. That rooster is very fierce. I was almost bitten by it several times. It has a very strong fighting power."
Qin Huai followed them slowly on a tricycle loaded with several buckets of water, watching Mu Nan help Jian Chu with his career. If this had happened in the past, the scene would have been a few good friends, barbecuing and drinking beer on a busy street, the most ordinary and yet the simplest and happiest.
Perhaps feeling something, Mu Nan turned his head to look behind him, and smiled instinctively when he met Qin Huai's eyes, then turned around and continued chatting with Jian Chu.
Walking back home slowly, Qin Huai parked the tricycle in the carport in the other corner of the yard and went back to his own home. Mu Nan and Song Jia followed Jian Chu upstairs. Jian Chu sorted out the collection records. He was worried that if he made too many, he might not be able to sell them all, so he only made four ovens. One oven can hold three trays of molds, and one mold can hold six cake cups. He also made an oven of egg pancakes, which are sold by gram, fifty cents for one hundred grams.
After all the expenses and income were finally recorded in the notebook, Jian Chu said, "Eight eggs were used, 400 grams of flour, and 250 grams of sugar. The total profit is 65.8 yuan."
Mu Nan was naturally not sensitive to numbers. His math grades were terrible before, and even Qin Huai, who had always been the top student in the grade, couldn't save him. So these numbers couldn't form a concrete concept in his mind. He could only ask directly, "How much did you earn?"
Jian Chu looked at the flour that was sold out online but still had a rush to buy it every day: "5 yuan a pound of flour. I don't know the market price of eggs, but Zibai and his friends in Qinghe found out that they were 3 yuan each. I used eight eggs, which is about 29 yuan including flour. Sugar is not sold on the market, so I can't calculate it for now, so the net profit excluding sugar is 36.8 yuan."
Song Jia: "You used half a pound of sugar? That's so much? How many times can you make it with the remaining sugar?"
Jian Chu calculated the amount of sugar in the family's reserves: "Not counting rock sugar, there are still more than ten kilograms of sugar."
Mu Nan said, "I still have a bag of bulk goods at home, 20 kilograms."
Song Jia: "If we don't find a stable source of supply, this won't be a long-term solution."
But a stable source channel is simply impossible. The main raw materials of sugar are sugarcane or sugar beets. The problem is that even eating is a problem now. Who would grow these things that can't fill the stomach? If the climate was not so bad, even the earthquake would not have destroyed people's lives. But now the exposed fields cannot be used for planting at all. How many indoor fields and indoor farms can there be? Some can only grow food.
Mu Nan said, "I have beet seeds."
Jian Chu smiled when he heard this: "How much trouble can we make by growing our own crops?"
Song Jia: "Let's raise and sell chickens. This is more reliable. When people's lives get better and there are more raw materials, we can open a dessert shop."
Jian Chu shrugged: "Let's make some of the candy at home first."
Anyway, he had thought about this a long time ago. Any business that requires sugar is not suitable for long-term development because the raw materials cannot be kept up. In the end, they will definitely have to rely on selling chickens and eggs to make a living. But he wants to make some changes now, mainly because the sugar is about to expire. Although it was sealed well in a sealed bag during the flood and no water got in, the temperature was too high and the sugar had melted into lumps.
Moreover, these candies were found in the previous business district. They have been there for at least one or two years. Although the shelf life of sugar is longer than that of ordinary things, it will not be damaged by freezing or heating. At most, it will become thinner when heated, but it will still go bad and expire. There are a lot of them left at home, but they don’t look very good. After all, they have melted and been put back in the refrigerator. So he wants to make a profit by making finished products with eggs and other things.
Hearing that Mu Nan's family still had so much candy, Jian Chu asked curiously: "Is your candy not melted?"
Mu Nan paused for a moment before saying, "I don't know. My brother put it in the refrigerator. I'll go back and check later."
Jian Chu said, "The shelf life of rock sugar is slightly longer than that of white sugar. If you still have rock sugar at home, keep it. The white sugar we made before is almost expired, and we can't finish so much in a day or two. You can bring it over. I will make it into finished products and exchange it for money to buy food."
Mu Nan said "oh". He hadn't thought about the issue of expired things for a long time. Although he hadn't forgotten about it, he didn't think of it at once. It seemed that Jian Chu went through so much trouble just to sell the candies that were about to expire.
The two stayed at Jian Chu's house for a while. After Jian Chu finished calculating the accounts, he gave the money that should go to Mu Nan to him. If Mu Nan brought flour and sugar later, he would split the money with Mu Nan 50-50. As for the labor cost, it was not included in it. It was not a big deal and it was not a long-term job.
Mu Nan had just returned home when the construction team arrived. Seeing Qin Huai preparing to go downstairs to supervise the work, he quickly told Qin Huai what he had said to Jian Chu: "I thought Jian Chu wanted to develop a dessert shop. I said I had a 20-pound bag of sugar at home, but I forgot that sugar would melt. Should I put the sugar outside and freeze it in the refrigerator after it melts?"
Qin Huai: "You can use a vacuum machine to directly fill 20 kilograms of vacuum bags with sugar and leave them on the third-floor balcony overnight. Xu Ming happens to be at work today, so no one will see the balcony on the third floor."
Mu Nan said: "It was almost exposed."
Qin Huai smiled and said, "How can this be considered a revelation? Fortunately, Jian Chu mentioned it. Otherwise, we would not have thought of the details of the expiration of the things we found, such as sugar. Now is the perfect time to deal with them."
Mu Nan nodded, and Qin Huai pushed him into the room: "Go take a shower and stay in the room to paint. If I feel hot and thirsty, I will come up to get a drink by myself. You don't need to send it down to me."
Mu Nan raised his paw and waved at him: "Then go ahead, I'll go get the candy."
While people in the South were upset about water restrictions and anxious about food shortages, a convoy was coming from the far north. In front were military vehicles leading the way, followed by trucks loaded with supplies, and further back were modified military trucks. However, the carriages behind the trucks were not filled with cargo, but with desperate expressions and bloody marks on their lips.
Some of these people who were slightly better off still had a bag on them, but most of them were either wearing tattered clothes or even just a pair of shorts that barely covered their bodies. They had dirty hair, foul body odor, black nails, and chapped skin. They looked even more like refugees than the refugees in the outer city on Kang Yun's side.
As the sky gradually brightened, the convoy leading the way finally found some half-collapsed abandoned buildings, so they parked all the vehicles one by one. The people in the vehicles got off in an orderly manner, and very skillfully followed the person in charge of each vehicle to find a place to temporarily settle down that could avoid the scorching sun.
The masses could rest temporarily, but many soldiers could not rest immediately. They needed to set up tables and chairs to distribute supplies. The supplies were half a piece of cornmeal bread mixed with mud for each person, and a sip of water that was just enough to sustain life.
It's not that no one had no complaints in the beginning, and not everyone could understand the current environment. Even if some people knew it in their hearts, they would still vent their despair brought by the environment on others, on the soldiers, and on the government. However, now is different from the past. No one is willing to bear more negative emotions from others, so after repeated thundering measures, most of those who can stay now are willing to obey and try hard to survive.
Therefore, even if they only had half a piece of bread and a sip of water every day, as long as they thought that they would reach the south and this hellish life would end, everyone struggled hard to stay alive.
Everyone lined up in an orderly manner to receive food. From the hard to swallow at the beginning, to everything that could be stuffed into the mouth, there was nothing that could not be eaten. There was also saliva. Some families had several people, such as brothers and relatives. They could take a sip of the food to quench their thirst that was as dry as the desert. The rest was carefully stored and taken out to sip when they were really thirsty on the road.
If you are alone or the elderly and weak are the only ones left, you should stuff your food and drink into your mouth quickly, because if you are late, it may not be yours. Although there are soldiers to maintain order, this order may not be maintained for everyone.
On this side, a grandfather and grandson had just received their food and were hurriedly stuffing it into their mouths, fearing that it would be snatched away if they were a step late. On the other side, there was a chaotic commotion, with two tall and strong brothers pinning a blond man to the ground and beating him, and directly snatching his food and water.
None of the people around stepped forward to dissuade them. At most, they just looked at the food and water being snatched away with envy.
As for the man who was beaten on the ground, it was probably not the first time. He didn't even dare to curse. He huddled on the ground for a long time before slowly crawling up. Then he sat on the side of the road for a while with his body hunched over. Because he had no clothes, his bones were clearly visible. He couldn't help but hold his hands around his belly which was sunken from hunger. His face was pale. Maybe one day, he would starve to death.
The two brothers divided the stolen food and water in half, but did not eat them directly. Instead, they gave them back to their parents and sister, cursing: "If you have the ability, go back to your own country. Why do you have to steal food from our people?"
Some people behind saw this and couldn't help but frown and complained in a low voice: "In this time of crisis, why bother with the distinction of nationality?"
The person next to him, who was so hungry that he had little strength left, rolled his eyes and retorted, "You are such a saint. Give your food to others."
The man was about to say something, but when he saw the impatient looks on the faces of the people around him who were queuing up to receive their things, he stopped talking immediately. It is okay to pity others, but it is absolutely impossible to use one's own things to pity others.
Situations like this are not isolated cases. They exclude foreigners because of the lack of supplies here. At this moment, some Chinese people in foreign countries are also suffering the same treatment. The only difference is that their innate tenacity and perseverance in the face of danger, the heritage and beliefs that have continued for thousands of years, have united them outside and allowed them to insist on returning home together.
It was also at this time that a group of people were moving forward in adversity. They held a precious list in their hands. In a land without peace caused by natural disasters and man-made disasters, they were searching and rescuing. They wanted to rescue those talented treasures overseas, as they were the future of their country.
The whole world was busy fighting, fighting, overthrowing and rebuilding on the land that was torn apart after the huge earthquake. Only China was busy absorbing and transferring talents, and along the way it brought many people who were drifting abroad back to the land of the motherland.
Those prophecies that were once treated as jokes may be coming true little by little. The most terrifying thing in this world is not the powerful weapons in peacetime, but who can truly survive the survival of the fittest when the disaster of destruction comes.
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