Spring Festival deliveries galore
FOOD delivery and online shopping sites reported strong sales over the Chinese New Year holiday, as most people avoided gatherings and visits to crowded shopping areas.
Ele.me’s food delivery of semi-prepared food surged 400 percent in the week before Chinese New Year’s Eve around the country, and takeaway for one-person meals doubled.
On the first three days of the holiday, Meituan’s takeaway orders in Shanghai more than doubled over last year, and the types of food and beverages available for takeaway increased 77 percent.
Beijing had the most orders for New Year’s Eve dinner (nianyefan), followed by Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
Nationwide, delivery orders jumped 81 percent, with more than a quarter of customers under the age of 25.
Shanghai consultant Sherry Chen said she bought a neck massage device for her parents in neighboring Jiangsu Province.
“I ordered the new-year gift from JD.com in advance to make sure it arrived before I went back home to join them for the holiday,” she said.
Shanghai-style chain restaurant Xin Bai Lu has been one of the caterers actively responding to new trends as people eat at home more. Its delivery income accounts for about 38 percent of total sales during non-holiday times, and it offered two types of set meals for nianyefan.
In addition to food and groceries, decorative items with Chinese New Year elements — such as fortune stickers and mahjong sets — were also popular.
Gift packages for set meals were bestselling items on JD, with sales increasing more than 300 percent in Beijing and Shanghai and 170 percent in Guangdong Province.
Shanghai marketing executive Jenny Huang ordered semi-prepared dishes from a local restaurant instead of set meals.
“It’s the best way to make sure everyone gets their favorite dishes without spending too much energy cooking for the whole family,” she said.
JD Daojia reported a 190 percent sales increase for new-year gift packages during the February 4 to 17 period, while sales of playing cards and board games also surged. Many began to prepare for a busy year ahead, which boosted sales of packaged instant food and drinks on the site that links consumers with physical stores and supermarkets.
Cooking materials and semi-cooked meals were also popular, and imported alcoholic beverages like brandy, rum and sparkling wine were among the fastestselling items.
Alibaba’s logistics affiliate Cainiao reported strong growth between February 4 and February 15, with sales increasing more than 400 percent since 2019.
The most popular destinations for online shopping packages were inland regions like Qinghai, Tianjin, Yunnan, Guangxi and Hainan.
Sales of nutritional supplements on Tmall from time-honored brands like Lei Yun Shang Group and Tong Ren Tang doubled over the 11-day sales period.
POWER was gradually being restored but hundreds of thousands of households remained without electricity early yesterday across Texas, the oil and gas capital of the United States, with some facing water shortages as a deadly winter cold spell that pummeled the southeastern part of the country headed east.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for a swathe of the country ranging from east Texas to the East Coast state of Maryland.
The NWS said the storm would bring ice, sleet and heavy snow to parts of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi as it tracks to the northeast, causing power outages, tree damage and making driving hazardous.
Even though the Arctic air mass was beginning to lose its grip on an area of the country not used to such extreme cold, the frigid temperatures would continue, the NWS said.
“Record cold daily maximum and minimum temperatures are likely to transpire in the South Central US through Saturday morning,” it said early yesterday.
“The Plains and Mississippi Valley can expect daily temperature anomalies ranging between 20 and 30 degrees below normal.”
President Joe Biden was forced to postpone until today a visit to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing site in Kalamazoo, Michigan, while federal government offices in Washington were to be closed today.
More than 30 storm-related deaths have been reported by media in the country since the cold weather arrived last week, many in traffic accidents.
Hundreds of thousands of residents of the Texas city of Houston were suffering from both power outages and a loss of water pressure.
“Water pressure is very low,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner tweeted.
“Please do not run water to keep pipes from bursting.”
Nearly 7 million Texans were being advised to boil their water before drinking it or using it for cooking.
Toby Baker, who heads the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said that nearly 264,000 people were impacted by non-operational water systems.
David Hernandez, 38, spent the night at a Houston church with other people who have fled their homes.
“My car got stranded and I was trying to sleep in the car but it was just too cold,” he said.
“Liquids in my car were actually turning to ice so it was like sleeping in an ice box.
“I had to come here. There’s no choice.”
Power companies in Texas have implemented rolling blackouts to avoid grids being overloaded as residents crank up the heat.
Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state grid, said on Wednesday it had restored power to around 1.6 million households.
“We are working around the
clock to restore power to Texans,” the council’s president Bill Magness said in a statement.
According to PowerOutage. US, 674,000 customers in Texas were still without power by yesterday morning, the only one of the country’s 48 continental states to have its own independent power grid.
Beto O’Rourke, a former Democratic presidential candidate from Texas, told a TV program that the situation in the Lone Star State was worse than hearing.
“Folks have gone days now without electricity. They’re suffering,” he said.
“So much of this was avoidable. The energy capital of North America cannot provide the energy needed to warm and power people’s homes in this great state. We are nearing a failed state in Texas.”
Austin Energy, the local power company in the capital city of 950,000, said tens of thousands of area customers were without electricity, and that while they were able to start restoring power in some
spots, it was not expected to stay on indefinitely.
The company published the locations of “warming centers” set up in schools.
As electricity companies struggle to get power restored, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport resumed flights on Wednesday after a two-day hiatus caused by heavy snow.
Jeff Zients, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, said the cold weather was impacting delivery and distribution of vaccines.
“There’s certain parts of the country, Texas being one of them, where vaccination sites are understandably closed,” Zients said. “What we’re encouraging governors and other partners to do is to extend hours once they’re able to reopen.”
Many weather-related deaths so far have resulted from traffic accidents, but Houston police said a woman and a girl died from carbon monoxide poisoning after sitting in a car in a garage with the engine running to keep warm.
AFTER the worst snowstorm in decades damaged half a million of Madrid’s trees, a specialist arboreal rescue team is swooping in to clone some of the most valuable specimens, creating genetically identical copies for future generations to enjoy.
Storm Filomena crashed through central Spain in early January, cutting off transport links to the capital and causing hundreds of millions of euros of damage.
“It’s
the
biggest environmental catastrophe of recent years,” said Francisco Molina, head of agroforestry at Madrid’s IMIDRA rural development institute.
“There’s been an unprecedented loss of natural heritage.”
Pruning saw in hand, he clambers under a 100-year old cork oak, which collapsed under several tons of snow.
After chopping off a long bough, he painstakingly strips away any smaller twigs and cuts it into regular 20-centimeter sections to be bundled up and sent to the lab.
The institute has been cataloguing and cloning Madrid’s noteworthy trees for 10 years, but after Filomena the agency offered help replacing trees with sentimental value.
Emblematic of the Spanish interior, the evergreen oaks sustain the country’s famed acorn-fed pigs.
But their broad leaves make them highly vulnerable to heavy snow.
It is a Chinese remake of the Japanese film “Key of Life.” The movie tells the story of a hapless loser who accidentally assumes the identity of an amnesia victim without knowing that he is an assassin. However, both of them come to realize purpose of life in the end. Starring: Andy Lau, Xiao Yang and Wan Qian
Where to watch: Grand
Theater Cinema, Cathay Cinema, Premiere Cinemas, UME International Cineplex, SFC New World Cinema City, Peace Cinema, Shanghai Film Art Center and Wanda Cinemas