Anyone who lived through it probably knows that later on, basically, from 11:00 PM to 2:00 AM, no household was asleep because the mothers were desperately trying to snatch groceries online. Online grocery buying was truly gone in seconds!
Before we knew it, the Group Leaders appeared. These leaders organized group purchases within their own compounds or across compounds to buy supplies for neighbors. They fell into two categories: one type, like my wife, did it purely as volunteer work, selling our factory's masks to compound neighbors at cost price. She found it meaningful and earned some goodwill in the compound.
The other type were black-hearted leaders who took the opportunity to sell at inflated prices. One notorious example stuck in my mind: a neighbor, acting as a leader, photoshopped the prices on a McDonald's promotion flyer and had us do a group buy. How long had it been since we'd had McDonald's? Everyone bought instantly. I later found out he used this method to make money. He later became a social pariah.
Later, when supplies became less scarce, you could group-buy anything, albeit at one to two times the usual price. I remember even hot pot, ice cream, pizza, and seafood were available for group purchase.
But what astonished me the most was that the most group-purchased item citywide was actually mini-fridges! Everyone developed a kind of anxiety, trying to stuff their home fridges full!
To be continued