Online shopping lets us live like kings

Every day most of us take for granted the fact that we can order and purchase all sorts of items online, thanks to e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, JD and Pinduoduo. For example, according to a report on Statista.com, during China's annual Single's Day shopping festival on Nov 11, 2022, around 527 million people shopped on Taobao, while around 576.2 million people purchased items via Pinduoduo. Last year, this meant that China's parcel delivery sector reached the landmark of having delivered more than 110 billion parcels by mid-October, ranking number one in the world for the ninth consecutive year, according to the industry's regulator, the State Post Bureau of China. The sophisticated nature of China's logistics sector, and the impressive development of the supply chain in recent years got me thinking about ancient Chinese history, as there is actually a connection between that and the convenience we enjoy today, and that connection shows how the lives of ordinary people have been radically transformed. Yang had a great fondness for lychees, but this fruit was not readily available where the royal court resided in the city of Chang'an, the capital of three dynasties, and which is today's city of Xi'an, the capital city of Northwest China's Shaanxi province.