Imagine when you¡¯re frosty and trembling, someone tells you that in a corner of the globe, children can¡¯t go to school at a temperature of 53 degrees Celsius, and apples are three times more expensive than beef in street stores.

Because the car may "freeze into iron lumps" once it is turned off, it is afraid to turn off the engine 365 days a year. This is not magical realism, but a small village that really exists in Oymyakon, the Russian Far East, which is still open at minus 63 ¡æ.

Here, the cost of living, the concept of time, and even the way of emotional expression, are all resettled by the cold, Apple 30 yuan is not expensive?

Extreme Law: Cold reprograms the way humans survive

In Oymyakon, the time is not calculated in seconds, it is calculated by "how long the skin can persist", go out and get the express? you have to finish before the eyelids are frozen, buy bottle water? it is best not to hesitate, open the door for a second, the indoor temperature can drop ten degrees, the residents here have long practiced the "time compression technique", buying food, taking medication, picking up children can be settled in a few minutes.

Not their efficiency, but a minute later, exposed ears outside may not be yours, this concept of "freeze time" is simply a new philosophy for modern urban people, real time management is not a schedule, but adaptability.

In terms of space use, this village has long been out of line. You can't see high-rise buildings or underground shopping malls, but there is a kind of "vertical wisdom" hidden under the ice.

Residents raised the ground to avoid heat loss, dig underground storage chambers, naturally preserved with ice sheets, and heated outdoors layered, like a Russian doll.

These clever spatial modifications not only allowed them to withstand the extreme cold period of up to seven months a year, but also inspired the construction of the Chinese Arctic Science Examination Station, in a place below 60 ° C, designed not for the beauty, but for life.

Heat energy is more valuable than money here. The community boiler room is manned 24 hours a day, and the heating pipes are connected to every household like blood vessels. Some villagers even take turns to add coal to the boiler. Heat energy is burned through "division of labor and cooperation". Does this "heat sharing mechanism" sound like a community version of shared bicycles? But it is more efficient than any capital operation.

Some border villages in Northeast China have borrowed this model and built their own winter heating networks. Here, warmth is not a commodity, but a collective tacit understanding.

Children are no exception. Do you think you can ask for sick leave at minus 30 degrees Celsius? No, you have to have minus 53 degrees Celsius before you consider suspending classes. Their courses not only include mathematics and Chinese, but also "How to Identify the Precursors of Chilblain" and "How to Find the North in the Snow". Education is not about indoctrinating knowledge, but teaching you how to survive.

This kind of "environmentally integrated education" allows them to understand from an early age that living itself is a learning. In contrast, our children learn about climate change in a constant temperature classroom every day, and they are experiencing it firsthand.

Upside down economy: apples are more expensive than beef, it is cold chain not market speculation

Seeing the apple sells 30 pieces, is not the first reaction, the store owner is crazy? but if you know this apple is from thousands of kilometers away from China Xinjiang, along the way "proof of heat" shipped, you have to cross the frozen land, climb the mountain, go through customs, and ride a special heating truck, you may feel that 30 pieces are cheap.

In Oymyakon, the most expensive is not the commodity, it is the "environmental cost" of transportation, the cold chain transportation elsewhere is "anti-corrosion", here is "anti-freeze", does not keep the heat, the apple before the shipment becomes a hockey, as a result, the fruit becomes a luxury.

Then look at why beef is so cheap, in fact, is not cheap, but they make the "energy cycle" to the extreme, the local people rely on the breeding of deer, horses, bulls and other low-energy animals to survive, these animals are adaptable, eat less, strong anti-freeze ability, after slaughter directly in the snow is natural cooling.

Meat is not afraid of bad, and does not need to consume electricity to freeze, the waste generated during slaughter can still be used as boiler fuel, even bones are not wasted, this "zero waste energy closure", in many countries has become a study sample.

And that seemingly unsightly small shop, in fact, is a technological miracle, you think it relies on electricity cooling? wrong, it relies on ice-snow insulation, using eternal freezing layer to do natural cooling warehouse, even the banking system is done "antifreeze treatment", here opened, not a business, is engaged in research, China's new energy enterprises have been looking at this extremely cold scene, specialized in the development of low-temperature heating system and antifreeze battery, get here test, data is more real than the laboratory.

Who said that extreme cold is a dead corner? for technology, such a place is a ¡°field of wild trials.¡±

And while we are still discussing which protein and carbohydrate are healthier, Oymyakons have given the answer with practical action that in the extreme cold, vitamins are the hard currency.

Beef is cheaper, eating too much can not resist bad blood disease, fruits become scarce resources, residents rely on "meat for fruit" to maintain nutritional balance, and apples are very expensive.

You think that Maslow's demands pyramid is iron law? here it is fallen, life is greater than satiety, eating more than eating well, extremely cold, and the economic logic has been redressed.

In the extreme cold, the human spirit never freezes.

Don't think that in the environment of minus 60 ¡æ, people become "moving frozen meat". On the contrary, the emotional expression here is more enthusiastic than anywhere else, but it's just a different way, because the face is too cold to move and you can't laugh. People have developed a language system of "eyes + gestures + ice sculpture".

Every year in the winter art festival, villagers use ice sculptures to express love, memory, humor, ice became their "emotional writing board", in this icy world, art is not a decoration, it is a necessity for communication.

Even more amazingly, such a "hard core" life, instead of giving residents a blast of happiness, psychological research shows that Oymyakons generally have a higher level of life satisfaction, why?

Not being frostbitten every day is a kind of victory, and it is a kind of pride that the boiler has not turned off. Coupled with the close mutual assistance between communities, whose boiler is broken and the whole village goes out to help repair it. Do you think their life is hard? People think your city people are too tired to live.

And cultural memory, also frozen into the eternal freezing layer, the village still preserves some hundreds of years ago hunting tools, as in the beginning, every winter long night, the elderly people around the fire tell stories, the children listen to stories while learning skills.

This "oral + practice" culture inheritance, instead, more lively than museums, this "time capsule" cultural protection, is also inspiring some Chinese ethnic minority regions to try to record and transmit in a more local way.

Oymyakon's experience, not only the cold knowledge of Cop, but also the most genuine reference sample when facing climate change, at the global climate conference, Chinese representatives made it clear that the three principles of "adaptative resilience, community synthesis, redundant design" are precisely refined from these extreme survival environments.

Do you think it¡¯s just a story of survival for a remote village? it actually reflects the future of the entire planet under extreme climates.

Underneath the ice of Oymyakon, buried the most precious survival code of human civilization, the wisdom of this frozen village is especially valuable when the global climate is faced with sharp fluctuations, and they demonstrate with practice that the extreme environment is not the end of life, but another beginning.

From the spring-like warmth in the bus shelter to the resilience of children's red smiling faces, the most beautiful poems about vitality are written here. As a local elder said, "We are not fighting against the cold, but dancing with it." This dance of ice and snow, which has lasted for centuries, will eventually provide eternal enlightenment for mankind to meet future challenges.

reference

Visit to 63-degree Siberian villages: Water leaked into ice before landing - People's Network, released on March 2, 2015