From the warm, prosperous Jiangnan to the steep, frigid Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, an efficient industrial chain across China swiftly sprang into operation.
Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, it was late October.
Feathery snow arrived as expected. The biting wind howled through the entire night, shaking the wooden planks of the temporary camp as if they might be torn apart at any moment.
The cold wind slipped through the cracks into the barracks. Indian Army soldiers curled up beneath their blankets, shivering as they struggled through the night.
Early the next morning, the cooks prepared breakfast.
The high-caste senior officers ate creamy chicken soup, while the low-caste rank-and-file soldiers ate curried lentil soup. The officers' staple was toasted bread spread with butter and jam, while the soldiers' was chapati, a thin charcoal-grilled flatbread. The officers drank coffee with milk, while the soldiers drank sweetened black tea.
The officers and soldiers ate entirely different meals. The only thing they had in common was that none of the food was cooked through.
Cooking at high altitudes required a special kind of pressure cooker. If one looked through the Huaxia military's equipment list, one would find an extremely strange pot fitted with no fewer than eight air valves.
Its body was thick and sturdy, its lid locked tightly in place with steel bolts. It looked fierce and terrifying, making it impossible to tell whether it was meant for cooking or some kind of high-powered tactical weapon.
The Indian Army had not widely adopted such specialized logistical equipment, so they could only boil some half-cooked curry slop to fill their stomachs.
Today, it was Ram's turn to go on patrol. After breakfast, he put on a sheepskin coat and backpack weighing over forty pounds, pulled on a sheepskin cap, and trudged forward through snow that reached past his calves.
The thin air made it difficult for him to breathe, and his energy consumption was three times what it was on the plains. After a long journey and countless rests, Ram finally followed the group to the front line.
From far away, he saw a group of Huaxia people standing by the lake, dressed in thin camouflage jackets that seemed to be their summer uniforms.
One sturdy man had undone two buttons on his shirt, making it easy to see that beneath his jacket, he wore only something like a dress shirt.
It was late October. Pangong Lake was snowbound, and the temperature had dropped to more than twenty degrees below zero. Yet he was wearing only a jacket and a shirt!?
How could these people still call themselves human!?
Looking more closely, the Huaxia people had in fact brought heavy clothing: tailored long overcoats, very thin ones normally issued only to southern troops because they looked good but offered little protection from the cold.
Perhaps because they found it too warm, the Huaxia people took off their coats and casually laid them on the largest rock by the lake to air out...
Ram was stunned. He was going crazy. His eyes had turned red!
He panted heavily, wrapped in a cumbersome sheepskin coat like a bear, yet he still felt as though he were about to freeze into an icicle.
Meanwhile, those Huaxia people were actually airing their coats on a rock!?
They had to be doing it on purpose, right?
They had not come to patrol today. They had come to show off their wealth, right!?
"God, aren't these Huaxia people afraid of the cold?"
"May Shiva bless us. Those Huaxia people must be possessed by evil spirits, which is why they do not fear the cold."
"Unbelievable. It feels like we are hallucinating in broad daylight..."
The soldiers were dumbfounded. The officers were dumbfounded. News quickly made its way back to New Delhi, and all Indians were dumbfounded...
In short, the moment the Indian Army witnessed the Huaxia people airing their coats by the lake, it was as if they had suffered a million-point critical hit. Their confidence completely collapsed in an instant!
Humans could never overcome the urge to compare themselves with others.
The Indian Army's motivation to hold on lay in the belief that everyone was about the same. If I had it bad, none of you should expect to have it good either. Everyone could suffer together and see who lasted longer.
But now? The Huaxia people had begun calmly airing their coats by the lake!
Meanwhile, they were wrapped up like bears and still shivering all over!
By Shiva, this was unfair!
"It's taken off! Our X series fiber has completely taken off!"
"Come look! This short video has completely detonated the internet. It broke one hundred million views in just a few hours!"
Dr. Xu Qingzhou had finally managed to return home for a visit, but for some reason, he had rushed back in the middle of the night. The moment he entered Gao Yuan's office, he excitedly waved his phone around and shouted.
Gao Yuan was skeptical. He took Dr. Xu Qingzhou's phone and saw that the video came from some overseas website. It showed Huaxia people and Indians chatting cheerfully by Pangong Lake while displaying traditional Chinese opera props, including wolf-tooth clubs and Guan Yu's saber.
"The focus isn't Guan Yu wielding a saber. It's the clothes those soldiers are wearing!"
"As the saying goes, without comparison, there is no harm. The foreign internet has completely exploded. Everyone is asking where they can buy jackets like those!"
Dr. Xu Qingzhou was so excited that he could barely form coherent sentences. Fortunately, Gao Yuan was relatively calm. He spent several minutes watching the entire video.
The video had been filmed by the Indian side, documenting how they encountered a group of Huaxia people airing their jackets by the lake.
The key was exactly what Dr. Xu Qingzhou had just said: in this world, without comparison, there was often no harm.
After watching the entire video, even Gao Yuan felt awkward.
It gave the impression of a group of primitives dressed in bear skins accidentally encountering a group of stylishly dressed modern people. The primitives were stunned and looked intensely envious.
Many people might not know this, but according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, China's annual grain output was close to six hundred million tons.
India, with a population roughly comparable to China's, produced only 294 million tons of grain, leaving its per capita food supply at only half of China's.
Yet even more unbelievable was that India, where there was not enough food to begin with, was still one of the world's leading rice exporters, exporting more than ten million tons of rice every year.
At the same time, because Hinduism prohibited eating beef, India was also one of the world's major beef exporters, ranking second globally behind only the vast and sparsely populated Australia.
According to data from the General Administration of Customs, in 2019, China imported 88.51 million tons of soybeans, 1.659 million tons of beef, and 2.69 million tons of pork.
The data made it clear that the per capita nutrition levels of China and India were simply not on the same level.
In fact, 2017 was a year worth remembering. That year, China's per capita meat consumption reached sixty-two kilograms, surpassing the most developed countries in East Asia, Japan and South Korea, for the first time in history and making China the biggest meat eater in East Asia and Southeast Asia.
Time did not lie, and neither did nutrition science. If this trend continued, before long, the Chinese people would surely become one of the most physically formidable peoples in the world!
Of course, China still faced many obstacles before achieving the goal of cultivating a civilized spirit and a savage physique. The greatest obstacle was a lack of scientific understanding.
Parents nagged children that they could not digest even two extra eggs, yet they guzzled meat broth packed with terrifyingly high purine levels. These utterly nonsensical ideas about nutrition had harmed who knew how many young people.
In short, when the two armies met, the differences in average nutrition, height, morale, and outerwear equipment compounded into an enormous contrast that left people dumbstruck.
Amid the cold wind and endless snow, a group of taller, stronger Chinese soldiers aired their coats by the lake.
They stood above the others, imposing and aggressive. Wearing only thin camouflage uniforms, they showed no fear of the knife-like wind as they stared at the shorter Indian Army soldiers opposite them, who were bundled up more thickly than bears yet still trembling.
At that moment, they looked like gods descending to earth!
Whoosh~
Dr. Xu Qingzhou was beside himself with excitement. He opened the comment section below the video, and tens of thousands of comments instantly flooded in.
The comments swept across the screen. Gao Yuan could not make out their exact contents, but countless exclamation marks filled his view. Clearly, this scene had delivered an incredibly powerful shock to many people.
"It's taken off!"
"Not just a small hit. We're completely, utterly on fire! A global sensation!"
Dr. Xu Qingzhou's voice was hoarse as he said with overwhelming excitement, "And we didn't spend a single cent to hire the greatest brand ambassador in the world!"
"Who would have thought that the PLA would personally step in to endorse us!"
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