Chapter 85 Heartache

Chapter 85 Heartache

Chapter 85 Heartache

"Yes, don't tell anyone about finding the beads and the cave. It's better to make a fortune quietly." Grandma Chen glared at Chen Yongwei and said, "Learn from your brother and sister-in-law in the future."

Chen Yongwei scratched his head awkwardly, "I see. I just wanted to sell them at a good price. I forgot that I hadn't gotten all the oysters back yet."

Father Li tried to smooth things over, "You'll know after you've experienced more things in the future." He then looked at Zhou Ruonan, "Anan, take the beads and put them away. Ah Le and Ah Wei, go to Tuxia Bridge and sell your catch. We'll continue opening oysters at home."

Li Changle nodded, and then worriedly reminded Zhou Ruonan, "Anan, you must pinch each piece of oyster meat carefully, don't miss any."

"Got it!" Zhou Ruonan glared at him in reproach and went into the house with the beads.

Grandma Chen smiled and said, "Ah Le, the oysters you picked are really good. Whether you dry them or sell them in town, you can get a good price."

Li Changle thought for a moment and looked at Father Li, "How about letting my mother send him to be sold?"

"Your mother and two sisters-in-law went to the sea to fish, and took the children with them."

Father Li then whispered, "Women are petty. It was you who took Awei to the cave to pry open oysters and open the pearls. I have already told your mother not to tell your two sisters-in-law."

He never dreamed that after the third brother got on the right track, he would have such good luck and a bright mind. Not only did he catch a lot of fish, but he also produced two pearls from just over a hundred pounds of oysters.

If I had known this earlier, I would have asked the eldest and second oldest families to take out money to form a partnership with him. But now that Awei has already formed a partnership with him, it would be inappropriate to ask the two older brothers to join in the partnership.

If that were to happen, it would only cause conflicts and estrangement between them. It would be better to wait until later, when there is an opportunity to buy a big ship, and then let the brothers form a partnership.

"Hmm!" Li Changle thought for a moment, "Plastic jars are good for catching octopuses. If my sister-in-law and the others want to do it, I'll buy them some. We can catch ten or so at a time while the tide is high. It's better than them going to the sea every day to fish."

Li Changle understood what his father meant. It was hard to make money now, so if he could get the oysters and conches in the cave, he could sell them for a fortune.

If his two sisters-in-law knew about this, they would definitely think that he would rather take Awei to pick up money than take his own brothers with him.

They would not think that, given his previous character, if he proposed to cooperate with the two families, even if the two brothers were willing, they would not agree.

During the days of working with Awei, what touched him the most was that this guy trusted him wholeheartedly and was not afraid at all that a scoundrel would embezzle his money and lead him into the gutter.

Father Li looked at him with relief, "Okay, I'll ask them when your sister-in-law comes back."

"Brother, it will be too late if we don't leave now." Chen Yongwei said as he picked up the backpack.

"Okay!" Li Changle lifted the old cotton wool covering the bucket. The ice had melted, revealing the large yellow croaker and three-tailed eagle pomfret inside. A trace of coldness still remained on the fish bodies.

When he got out, he said to Father Li, "Dad, don't let the children touch the trap in the bamboo basket. The gray-blue sea snake is still in the trap."

"It's better to kill it first. It will be troublesome if the children touch it." After saying this, Father Li touched his legs which were still weak. He didn't know how long it would take for them to recover to their previous state.

"Brother, I'll get the pliers."

"Okay!" Li Changle went over and took the fishing rope out of the bamboo basket. He took the pliers handed to him by Chen Yongwei and clamped the sea snake. The sea snake struggled violently, raised its small head, and curled its tail around the pliers.

"I think you are still fierce!" Chen Yongwei cut off the snake's head with a knife, then took the pliers, clamped the snake's head, and ran quickly towards the toilet.

There was an incident in the village where a person was bitten by a severed snake head. From then on, whenever a snake was killed, everyone would throw the snake head into the toilet to prevent children from getting into trouble due to their mischief.

Li Changle put the snake's body into the basket and said, "Dad, wait for me to come back and peel it."

"Give it to me," Father Li took the basket with a smile, "I can't do anything with it alive, but peeling it is easy."

"Okay, then I'm leaving." Li Changle picked up the bucket and backpack, and strode out of the house with Chen Yongwei and walked towards the village entrance.

After waiting on the side of the road for a while, a minibus packed with people drove over, and from a distance I could see that the roof of the bus was filled with bamboo baskets.

After the typhoon, many more people went to sell their catches than usual.

The two of them squeezed into the car. The aisle was filled with buckets and backpacks. Many of them were people who had rushed out early to sell their goods. The smell of sweat and fishy seafood was so refreshing.

The two of them were squeezed together with the coachman like two sardines, stopping and starting along the way. It took them half an hour to walk a distance that should have taken more than ten minutes.

The two got out of the car and hurried to the Phoenix Restaurant. When they arrived at the kitchen, they knocked on the door. A sturdy man wearing a greasy apron asked about the situation and went to call A Kun.

"Uncle Kun, there are good things after the typhoon." Li Changle lifted the taro leaves covering the bucket, "This is what we got last night, large yellow croaker and eagle pomfret. We kept them frozen with ice last night, so they are still fresh!"

"Yes, both are good stuff." A Kun squatted down and opened the fish gills to take a look. "Good stuff! The price of yellow croaker has increased a bit now, but it's still not as high as that of eagle pomfret." He smiled and looked at Li Changle. "To be honest, I think yellow croaker tastes better and looks more luxurious. I don't know why it can't be sold at a high price?"

"The price will probably go up in the future. I heard that even during the fishing season, there are very few fishing boats that catch tons of yellow croaker." Li Changle felt a pang of pain when he thought about the future price of yellow croaker.

"I heard from fishermen I know that there are no fish during the fishing season, and it's all the work of the 'bang bang boats'." A Kun shook his head and sighed, "I remember one year, when the yellow croaker fishing boats returned, the yellow croakers at the dock were piled up like a mountain.

The streets and alleys were filled with vendors hawking bang fish. A fish weighing seven or eight taels cost only a few cents per pound. My mother would buy dozens of pounds at a time. She would chop the big ones and dry them in the sun, and pickle the small ones in a jar and eat them slowly.

Later I heard that there were still a lot of yellow croakers that couldn’t be sold and had not been chopped and dried in time, and they were piled up at the dock and all rotted.”

Li Changle nodded and said, "I've also heard from my father that our village still has some yellow croaker that it can't eat in time, so it's cooked and fed to the pigs."

Knocking the bang - that is, the operation of beating the fishing net. The so-called "knocking the bang boat" is to saw the bamboo into tubes, tie them to the side of the boat and beat them.

Because there are two white stones in the skull of yellow croaker - fish brain stones, which function to receive and detect sounds like radar. Because of these two stones, yellow croaker is very sensitive to sound.

Large and small yellow croakers were once one of the four major fish species in the Zhoushan fishing grounds in the East China Sea. In the old days, every night during the fishing season, the unique "cuckoo" sound of yellow croaker schools could be heard in all the ports along the coast of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Fishermen followed the sound, dozens or even hundreds of fishing boats banged bamboo clappers together, and the yellow croakers heard the sound waves, just like Sun Wukong heard Tang Sanzang chanting the tight-hoop curse.
They fled in large groups on the sea, tumbling and falling, and some were fainted or dead, and even their eggs and offspring were caught in the net.

"It's better to cook it and feed it to the pigs than to pile it up at the dock and let it stink." After looking at the fish, A Kun said, "Yellow croaker is one dollar per pound, eagle pomfret is one dollar and fifty cents, sole skin is three triangles per pound, and tide-watching fish, sea bass, blue crab, and orchid crab are all the same price."

"Okay." Li Changle said with a smile, "Uncle Kun, there are still three tiger eels, dozens of purple sea urchins, and dozens of kilograms of Buddha's hand snails. They are all good stuff."

"Let me see!" Ah Kun looked at him in surprise. "Wow! I haven't seen such a big Buddha's hand snail in years. And there are sea urchins and tiger eels. You can get such good stuff by scouring the sea. You must be the reincarnation of the son of Lord Hailong!"

"It's just a gift from Lord Hailong!" Li Changle smiled as he picked up some Buddha's hand snails and a few sea urchins from the backpack, and handed them over with a smile, "Take them back for Auntie to try."

A Kun took it with a smile in his eyes, "You two are too polite."

Li Changle smiled and said, "You are polite!"

"Good boy!" A Kun patted him on the shoulder and pointed at the largest purple sea urchin. "This one is priced at one dollar each. The smaller ones are priced at star anise and Buddha's hand snail..."

He thought for a moment and said, "It's really hard to find such good stuff. Even if you buy one pound of tiger eel for one yuan, I'll charge you six cents."

After hearing this, Li Changle said gratefully: "Thank you Uncle Kun for taking care of me!"

"The goods you delivered are worth this price." A Kun turned around and shouted towards the kitchen, and A Sheng came out carrying household items and a scale.

When he saw the catch displayed in the yard, he showed an envious look, "Ah Le, you guys are not fishing in the sea, I think you are just picking up money."

"..." Li Changle laughed, "The catch is better after the typhoon, but you don't get this kind of luck every day."

"Why don't you go pick up fish when it's so easy to pick up?" A Kun rolled his eyes at him. "A Le is so lucky. You can't envy him. The two families who sent their catch this morning sold it for a total of how much. Didn't you see it?"

Ah Sheng nodded awkwardly, "I saw it. The two families only sold more than 30 pieces in total, and it was the best harvest in the past half month."

"That's it!" A Kun patted him, "It's useless to be jealous. You have to be lucky. You should learn from Chef Wang and master the skills. That's what you should do."

"Oh!" Ah Sheng went to the kitchen.

Ah Kun thought about the purple sea urchins that Chen Ji had sent over this morning, but none of them were as big as the ones Ah Le sent. He thought about the fact that they were from the same village, "Ah Le, did you sell any of the purple sea urchins to Chen Ji?"

"I was blocked on the road by him when I came back from fishing last night..." Li Changle recounted what happened, "We are from the same village. A Wei is a relative of his and we still have some exchanges."

"The people who come to our place to eat and stay are all rich people. The more expensive the items, the easier it is to sell. Good goods are hard to find, so ordinary goods have to be sold to them."

"That's what I thought, so I gave some to him."

Li Changle and Chen Yongwei took the net bag containing the Buddha's hand snails out of the backpack and put it on the scale. After weighing it, A Kun counted and reported the amount:

"53 jin of Buddha's hand snails, one yuan per jin, 53 yuan, 9 jin and 3 liang of large yellow croaker, 9.3 yuan, 8 jin and 2 liang of eagle pomfret, 12.3 yuan, 18 jin of tiger eel, 10.8 yuan.

Twenty-one top-quality purple sea urchins, twenty-one dollars, five sea urchins, thirty-five dollars, twenty-eight dollars... blue crabs, fifteen dollars, tide watchers, twelve dollars, a total of one hundred and ninety-six dollars."

(End of this chapter)