Twenty years of cold chain

Faced with this situation, the old village chief could no longer sit idly by. In the summer, plums were the village's biggest hope. Plums were the "native fruit" of Lianghuzhuang. Some small households didn't have the means to trellis grapevines, but every household had quite a few plum trees. For some families, plums were their only harvest of the year.

Moreover, this is the hottest time of year when money is scarcest. We need to prepare tuition and miscellaneous fees for the children's next semester, and with markets big and small coming one after another, we have to buy things. If the plums don't survive this season, anything uncontrollable could happen.

Hu Shutong suggested a system of six households per storage facility, with each household adjacent to the others. This would divide Lianghuzhuang into thirty-five "communities," with each household contributing funds and one facility acting as the sole provider for future subsidies. This way, the entire Lianghuzhuang harvest would be taken into account, ensuring no one was left behind and helping the village weather the storm. As for storage capacity, Hu Shutong had already prepared for this by adding shelves and extending into passageways during this extraordinary time.

The village committee, completely clueless, readily agreed to the suggestion.

Time was of the essence; there were only twenty days left until the plums were harvested, and only eight workers knew how to install them. With determination, Hu Shutong conducted overnight training for the workers in the courtyard. He didn't teach them how to install it, but rather how to accurately and quickly convey important installation details to the villagers.

To ensure a good harvest under these circumstances, everyone must work hard and make the harvest as fast as the plums ripen.

Thus, an unprecedented operation was launched in Lianghuzhuang!

The workers all became master craftsmen, leading everyone in lifting and moving planks, assembling grooves, and using all sorts of tools, big and small, from the village. Gradually, this enthusiastic energy became increasingly infectious. No one knew when the pandemic would end, but everyone was striving for a new beginning!

People live with spirit and energy. When faced with natural disasters, is it okay to just accept it and wait and see? That underestimates the diligence of the Chinese people! Even if this batch of plums can't be saved, there's always the next batch of grapes, the next batch of oranges. As long as there's something to hold onto, people have hope and something to strive for!

Hu Shutong seemed to have superhuman speed, walking through the village countless times every day. He single-handedly shouldered the heavy responsibility of equipment management. The cold storage was divided into four groups: A, B, C, and D, and he had to constantly travel between each group.

The warehouse is the skeleton, and the equipment is the heart. If the equipment is neglected or not in place, it will cause huge problems in the future. Hu Shutong personally handles each warehouse, while the village workers are mostly responsible for moving the equipment.

In no time, the distinction between "your family" and "mine" disappeared, and everyone reached a consensus to work together to get the matter sorted out. Hu Shutong also started eating "food from a hundred families," having a meal at a fellow villager's house whenever the time was right. More than ten days passed, and thanks to the concerted efforts of the entire village, progress was encouraging.

An old man runs a small shop in the village, and lately the phone has become Hu Shutong's personal telephone, receiving more than a dozen calls a day. The old man has difficulty walking, and Hu Shutong is constantly moving around the village, making it impossible for him to catch up with him. So the old man tries to write down who and what happens, and then tells Hu Shutong all of it at once in the evening.

Firstly, his memory was poor, and secondly, he couldn't understand what some people were saying. When it came to Hu Shutong, the surname kept changing – sometimes Qi, sometimes Qian, sometimes a professor, sometimes a boss. Hu Shutong had no time to pay attention, and besides, he couldn't leave the area anyway, so thinking about it was pointless.

The old man cared about Hu Shutong's affairs, as did many of the villagers. They gave Hu Shutong some old but clean clothes and new cloth shoes they had made themselves. One evening, they even waited in the yard to cut Hu Shutong's hair.

Every evening when he returned to the courtyard, there would be some hard-boiled eggs and sweet rice cakes on the small table under the banyan tree. Late at night, Hu Shutong would always hear the familiar sound of a motorcycle, and Brother Shengxi would always come to see him with a can of chicken and two peanut side dishes. Knowing that he no longer drank baijiu, he would find some homemade fruit wine from the villagers, and drinking a little would help him sleep more soundly.

……

Hu Shutong, living far away in a corner of the world, had no idea about the outside world.

At this moment, Qi Zhendong is facing a situation even more troublesome than when he first arrived in the southern suburbs. Looking at the documents in front of him, Qi Zhendong is almost on the verge of collapse. In the past, materials and equipment were like choosing the best of a bad bunch, but now, there are almost no bad ones left to choose from.

Businesses are not optimistic. Whether this pandemic will end this year, next year, or many years from now is uncertain, and this uncertainty means endless risks. There are more than fifty suppliers in the southern suburbs, and the cold storage equipment industry is booming. Many of them are small and medium-sized enterprises that have only been established for a few years. The pandemic has impacted the ability of many companies to fulfill their contracts.

On one hand, SMEs are struggling to survive, while on the other hand, they are receiving offers from large corporations. This presents a tremendous challenge for SMEs, while for large corporations, it represents both opportunities and challenges, making mergers and acquisitions a hot topic in the industry. Large corporations compete with each other, vying for both market share and talent.

The combination of these two factors has led to a collapse in the supply warehouses in the southern suburbs.

During the pandemic, the nation called for "no work stoppages during SARS," and the construction in the southern suburbs was not delayed. If the equipment could not keep up, not only Qi Zhendong, but the entire southern suburbs team within the group would face dismissal.

The Minghe people collected the equipment library, but they didn't understand it thoroughly. This matter, which was handled by Hu Shutong, could only be resolved by the person who tied the knot.

Just then, Qi Zhendong's phone rang.

The screen reads "Zhonglesi Qian Guowei".

……

I've loved cold chain logistics for twenty years.