The beautiful arapaima is a wild fish native to Indonesia. Half a century ago, it was basically used as an ingredient in the local area, but in China, it was invited into a huge glass fish tank, and it has a more legendary name, the dragon fish.
In the eyes of Arowana lovers, Arowana is no different from the dragons of myths and legends in terms of appearance and charm. When the scales on the arowana are called "dragon armor", the two tentacles become "dragon whiskers", in a sense, it is also given to people with certain special wishes, such as wealth, luck, and avoidance of disasters.
The people who breed and sell Arowana are called "dragon keepers". Since the 1990s, fish dealers, wealthy people and fish lovers with a keen sense of smell have joined the ranks of "dragon keepers".
"Flowers, birds, fish and insects" is a complex of Beijingers. Xu Jiaping, a 60-year-old native of Beijing, still often recalls the happy days of secretly raising goldfish under his bed in elementary school.
In 1999, Xu Jiaping began to join the ranks of "dragon keepers". "At that time, the dragon fish had just been introduced to China, there were not many people, the supply of fish was in short supply, and a dragon fish of ordinary quality could sell for seven or eight thousand. At that time, the housing prices in Beijing were only more than 2,000 per square meter. ”
Xu Jiaping is one of the earliest Arowana players in China, and also sells Arowana. He likes to raise a small fish from more than ten centimeters to tens of centimeters, wait for it to grow, see its color turn red, and nourish its shape by feeding, changing water, etc., "just like raising a child." ”
The longest fish, Xu Jiaping has been raising for 12 years. "The red arowana almost turns red from the age of one or two, but it doesn't get color until it's five or six years old, and if you keep it carefully, it will definitely give back to you and become beautiful."
According to Xu Jiaping, in Asia, Arowana is divided into red arowana, Arowana and Blue Dragon, of which red Arowana is the most expensive. Even in Indonesia, wild Arowana is small and even endangered at one point. In the Washington Convention (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), signed in 1976, it is labeled a Class A protected animal and is as rare as China's giant panda.
It was not until the end of the 1980s, when fish merchants achieved artificial breeding of Arowana, that Indonesia allowed Arowana to be exported. Under the pursuit of Japanese, Singaporeans, and Hong Kongers, Arowana has changed from edible fish to ornamental fish, and places to function have changed from tables to fish tanks.
When in Indonesia, the name of the dragon fish is not related to the dragon. It wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that singaporeans or Hong Kongers named it "Arowana", "but the specific circumstances are not verifiable." After being given the word "dragon", the "humanistic qualities" of this rare fish were excavated, and some magazines said that it "surpassed ordinary ornamental fish and became a top spiritual sustenance animal."
In China, most of the people who raise dragon fish are people with certain economic strength. Xu Jiaping has encountered many large customers, some of whom have large fish tanks, 16 meters long, 5 meters wide, 1.8 meters high, covering an area of 80 square meters, and raising more than 70 dragon fish. "At that time, there was no mobile payment, it was difficult to swipe the bank card, and customers came over with a bag of cash every time, bought fish in millions of units, and took more than 20 at a time."
"In countries such as Indonesia and Japan, a fish has been farmed for more than a decade, but in China, people are often in a hurry. Buying big fish is too expensive, buying small fish and can't wait for it to mature naturally, in order to make the young dragon fish 'transform', some people feed ripening, medicate, and give fish to eat frogs, centipedes. In this regard, Xu Jiaping, who loves fish, sighed very much.
What makes Xu Jiaping sigh even more is the lost Dragon Fish Market. In Malaysia's waters close to Kalimantan there is a special Arowana with a gold line that extends from the head to the tail, called the over-the-back golden dragon. The price is higher, but the original production is less, so someone let the Arowana and the red-tailed Arowana hybridize and breed a fake over-the-back golden dragon, Xu Jiaping felt that such a fish "can no longer be seen."
Large-scale hybridization of Arowana, coupled with the continuous reproduction of the same batch of fish in a fish farm, is more and more likely that inbreeds will produce offspring. Around 2012, the quality of Arowana was getting worse and worse, and the price continued to fall, and Arowana enthusiasts began to pursue red Arowana instead. But Xu Jiaping believes that without the intervention of market participants and the change of mentality, the pure red arowana will soon be placed in the same embarrassing position.
Xu Jiaping, who is busy taking care of the arowana every day, relies on years of hard work to explore his own breeding experience, and insists on not feeding the red arowana to eat live bait such as small frogs. He said: "I can't bear to see the dragon fish eat the living little frog, in fact, the dragon fish has a lot of ingredients, not necessarily to eat the little frog." ”
Talking about the experience of raising dragon fish for more than 20 years, Xu Jiaping said: "The winds and things in the world are good for each other. Zhou Dunyi loves Lotus, Tao Yuan Caritas Chrysanthemum. Unlike celebrities, they love the wind and bone of things, while I love the enlightenment and practice in the process of fish farming. ”
In addition to raising dragon fish, Xu Jiaping also uses dragon fish as the subject of photography creation, and the photographic works of dragon fish theme interact with dragon fish players at home and abroad through social platforms.
For the future development of the arowana market, Xu Jiaping has confidence, "in 2005, the sales volume of Chinese mainland arowana has accounted for 30% of the world's arowana production, more than 40% in 2006, in recent years, China's ornamental fish industry has developed rapidly, the market scale has also been expanding, with the opening of the domestic market continues to deepen, in the next period of time, the ornamental fish industry still has a large space for development." ”