Jing Shu understood the weary sigh in Grandma Jing's voice, the echo of generational trauma, and she understood even better, with visceral clarity, how obscenely precious food was in the apocalypse. That was why she prepared so much, hoarded so relentlessly, because many things, like peace, like safety, like choice, were truly out of print now.
After the family finished collecting their meager water ration, they got into their energy car under a barrage of envious, hungry stares. If not for the armed police patrols stationed nearby, those covetous eyes might have quickly turned into hands grabbing at their clothes, their bottles, the car itself. In times like these, people who were cleanly dressed, well-fed, and drove a private vehicle looked glaringly, dangerously out of place.
Half a year into the apocalypse, almost no one had clean clothes anymore. People couldn't even drink enough water to survive, much less waste any on washing themselves or their rags.
"I don't get why people who can obviously afford a car still compete with us for these pitiful resources. We're already miserable enough, and they still fight us for the daily water. It's because of people like you that the water allotment keeps getting smaller for the rest of us." A woman's voice, shrill with resentment, cut through the murmuring crowd.
"Exactly. Look at how clean they are. They still come to get the free water. Giving it to them is a waste. Better to give more to us, we actually need it." A man chimed in, his tone ugly.
Sitting in the comfortable, cool, air-conditioned car, Jing Shu took a long, deliberate slurp of her icy yogurt drink, meeting the woman's gaze through the window with flat indifference. "Look at that," she thought, "the classic pity-me-therefore-I-am-right routine." These rations were what every registered citizen of China was entitled to receive by current law. Everyone had a share. Hers wasn't taken from someone else's portion.
Why should her pity for someone else's situation mean handing over her own hard-won supplies? Why should the resources she had secured through foresight and risk go to someone who hadn't prepared, just because that person had less? By that logic, Jing Shu managed resources for the community, she raised frogs that protected crops for the entire city. Did that mean she deserved their shares? It was a bankrupt argument born of desperation and envy.
"Let's go, Dad. Ignore them." Jing Shu's voice was calm, final.
"Right." Jing An put the car in gear, the electric motor whirring softly as they pulled away from the crowd of glaring faces.
There would be many, many such people after the apocalypse, Jing Shu knew, and the divide between the prepared and the desperate would only sharpen, calcify into permanent strata. Some would end up trailing behind, forever picking up whatever bug or scrap they could to survive. Others, like her family, and like the government planners, would create new value and substitutes in this broken world, finding ways to not just survive, but to rebuild a sliver of order.
…
This was the first Dragon Boat Festival after the apocalypse. By the time the actual day arrived, they had finally wrapped all the soaked glutinous rice, using the broad lotus leaves. Each bundle was tied with twine into a neat, inverted triangle and dropped into giant pots of boiling water to cook. One batch finished after more than an hour, was scooped out to cool, and the next batch went in while they kept wrapping at the kitchen table, an assembly line of normalcy.
Careful and methodical as ever, Grandma Jing had separated the different fillings by tying them with different colored strings. Red meant sweet jujube, green meant savory meat. There were several colors in all for the different varieties.
So as not to overly torment their hungry neighbors, Jing Shu turned on the powerful range hood, but it did little against the sheer volume and richness of the fragrance. The unmistakable, mouth-watering scent of boiling zongzi, the starch of the rice, the aroma of the leaves, the hints of meat and dates, drifted far and wide through the still, hot air.
Jing Shu had gone a long time without eating proper zongzi and was practically drooling. As soon as one pot came out and cooled slightly, she couldn't wait. She blew on a hot bundle, untied it, dipped a corner in golden honey, and took a huge bite. The sticky, sweet, fragrant perfection made her close her eyes. In no time she had devoured more than ten, her enhanced metabolism demanding fuel.
[Fat Girl No. 25]: "Yesterday I tried more than a dozen flavors of maggots. The pepper-salt one was the best, I guess. But weirdly, I keep smelling zongzi though. Maybe my nose is playing tricks from hunger."
[Shizi No. 21]:"I smell zongzi too. Meat zongzi, the savory kind with chunks of fatty meat. I even smell… chicken leg? Am I hallucinating?"
[Fat Girl No. 25]:"Then we're not smelling the same thing. I'm definitely getting red jujube, the sweet kind."
[Chou Chou No. 24]:"Strange, I smell zongzi as well. Feels like it's wafting from… the direction of the villa area."
Wang Qiqi jumped in quickly to smooth things over and divert attention: "Ai Jia supermarket is selling simplified rice-wrapped packets now, calling them 'Festival Zongzi.' Two work points each. If you need some holiday feeling, go catch more maggots and exchange them for points."
Wang Cuihua sent a voice message, practical and unashamed: "If I have those points, I'd rather buy a big bowl of plain white rice. Maggots are easy to catch right now. There are dozens of kilograms in the cesspit under our building. I've already caught a bucket and traded for points."
[Fat Girl No. 25]:"Sister, that's disgusting. From the latrine? And people are going to eat that?"
Wang Cuihua voice message, defensive: "So what. I use a long-handled shovel, dig them out from the top layer, rinse them quick with half a bottle of water, and they're fine. I traded for 20 points today. I'm staking out other abandoned building toilets too. It's efficient."
[Feng No. 3]:"Sister, I'm begging you, stop. No wonder today's maggot stew tasted vaguely… weird. There are so many maggots outside in the compost heaps and you insist on digging in a toilet."
Wang Cuihua voice message, annoyed: "You would spend forever picking little by little outside. One shovel in a deep toilet gets you a whole scoop. You want points or not?"
The zongzi discussion finally died down, overtaken by the grim logistics of maggot procurement. Jing Shu exhaled quietly in relief. Thank goodness layers of dust and grime had piled up ten centimeters thick on the outside of their tempered glass greenhouse canopy, blocking the villa's interior light and details tightly. Otherwise, their relatively lush situation would've been fully exposed.
Jing Shu had to admit, coldly, that the government's policy was brutally successful. By the very next day, it seemed like everyone was hunting maggots. Some enterprising souls even started "farming" them. As for how, you just dug a pit, used it as a communal latrine, and let nature take its course. The rest you can imagine.
Once there was a first time, overcoming the initial disgust, there would be a second, and a third. Over time, everyone would gradually, horrifyingly, accept eating maggots as a normal part of life. The psychological barrier was being systematically dismantled by hunger and incentive.
The country's earlier fear that the carrion scavenger would sit unchallenged at the top of the food chain was solved in a surprisingly simple, disgusting way. The potential fly outbreak was also curbed: every day, masses of people went everywhere to catch them, filling giant sacks for processing, suppressing their population growth.
The carrion scavenger bred rapidly and in huge numbers, but flies were one of the few creatures that still moved freely in the extreme heat and fed on carrion scavenger eggs and larvae. The flies kept the carrion scavenger in check, and humans found a new, renewable protein source. A new, grimly efficient food chain had taken shape: decay -> carrion scavengers -> maggots -> humans.
At the same time, this laid a psychological and logistical foundation for the next inevitable step… eating the red nematode worms that would infest the coming floods. One horror at a time.
It was reported in the controlled news that in the latter half of 2023, countless carrion scavengers in China were eaten by maggots, and hundreds of billions of maggots were, in turn, eaten by people. On average, the report claimed, each person consumed more than a hundred maggots a day.
That same year, the news proudly stated, China had the world's highest survival rate at 89 percent. The United States was at 85 percent, India at 81 percent.
Several small European nations were reportedly being tormented by unchecked carrion scavenger and fly swarms. They prepared to deploy new, expensive insecticides, but the effect was poor in the extreme heat.
The United States, according to intelligence, prepared to concentrate its remaining population into fortified zones, migrate collectively, then controversially launch tactical nuclear weapons at infested regions before migrating to their periphery. The U.S. had vast grain reserves and far fewer people to feed.
India and its African counterparts, the report said, had learned from China's example and joined the bug-eating ranks. As the great man said, the strength of the masses is immense. No need for fancy, resource-intensive solutions.
Russia, ever the fierce warrior nation, simply announced a new law: each able-bodied citizen must eliminate one thousand bugs per day, by any means necessary. The report didn't specify the penalty for failure.
The news now reported daily on other countries' misery and extreme measures, all of which subtly highlighted the comparatively gentler, more organized approach of the Chinese government. It was propaganda, but it worked on a population craving stability.
In Wu City, the government's biggest immediate worries were all solved. There was food, however revolting. People wouldn't starve en masse. Aside from the chronically scarce water, there were no other immediately fatal factors threatening social collapse.
That meant it was time to free up hands and deal with the lingering problem: the robbers and murderers from the chaotic early months. Wu City would set an example and take the lead in the nationwide reform toward the new, stricter system of control and punishment. The period of gentle inducement was over.
After two months of relatively soft policy, offering points for knives, rewarding reports, there were still those who acted like local kings, occupying blocks, and those who kept herds of stolen animals. The authorities now began to bare their fangs at remaining criminals. The cleanup was starting.
…
For the Dragon Boat Festival, wanting a sense of family, Su Lanzhi had invited Eldest Uncle Su Yiyang's family to the villa for an afternoon meal. Ever since the complete, bitter break with Su Meimei and the revelation of her origins, Su Lanzhi recognized only one elder brother: the honest, decent Su Yiyang.
Jing An drove out mid-morning to pick them up from Xishan, but called partway through the journey, his voice hesitant over the car's speaker: "Lanzhi, your sister-in-law… she says she wants to invite her own brother's family too… says it's a festival, should be more lively."