I work as "Sister Lang" in the Arctic Ocean, with a monthly salary of 130,000

New Weekly

2024-05-24 12:03Posted on the official account of Guangdong New Weekly

Author | Zhan Shibo

Edit | Lu Yiming

  Title Picture | Xiaohongshu @ Arctic Ledger

The hull of the ship undulated violently with the waves, and the 450-kilogram crab pots were returned to the deck from the deep sea under the control of a robotic arm, and the crew quickly fixed the cages on the rocking deck.

Every toss and retraction is a great test of physical strength and skill. In the dim light, the fisherman struggled to walk, and the slightest accident was hit by a cage or caught in a rope, and he could die.

But the more common danger is still from the waves and hypothermia, once you fall, don't be delusional to be rescued and save people.

Surrounded by seagulls, the fishing boats look as beautiful and tranquil as oil paintings, but in fact they are full of dangers. (Photo/"Fisherman's Fight")

The above plot comes from the 2005 documentary "Fisherman's Fight", and countless people were deeply shocked after seeing the daily life of king crab fishermen.

They call themselves "fishermen", and women are gradually appearing on this ancient and dangerous road to gold.

Three years ago, Liu Yifan, who bid farewell to his job in a state-owned enterprise, came to Norway from Shanghai. She chose to board a fishing boat and became the first Chinese girl on board to face the extreme and unknown.

But what really broke her down was not the sea and the accident.

Perpetual motion machines at sea

At 10 o'clock in the evening, Liu Yifan put on a labor protection suit, changed into a pair of heavy and smelly boots, and walked to the processing cabin.

As far as the eye can see, there is no shadow of a second ship in the visible sea. The waves are huge. In this weather, fishermen fishing for crabs on deck don't know how many new wounds they will get from their nets.

Fortunately, Liu Yifan doesn't have to blow the sea breeze today, but being indoors doesn't mean it's easier. In the cabin of minus 20 degrees Celsius, bait crab fishing, sorting and slashing, packing and preservation, each link can easily destroy the double limit of psychology and physiology of fishermen after 12 hours of repetition.

Unlike in "Fisherman's Fight", the boat Liu Yifan is on is huge. The first thing I did when I got on the ship was to train everyone on safety and teach them how to save people.

On the third day of stepping on the fishing boat, Liu Yifan's muscles began to protest. Soreness poured in like a tide, and the heavy work often caused pins and needles in the shoulders and necks, and the stiff and heavy bib pants on the shoulders were even worse.

Labor protection clothing is very breathable, and it is common for you to sweat every time, and you are so tired that you are dizzy and can't straighten your waist. When you stand, you can tolerate the numbness in your toes, but when you lie down, you lose sensation in your feet—something more frightening than pain.

Before the old wound heals, the new wound comes to the door. In the first week on board, Liu Yifan's fingers were unable to bend and were so swollen that they couldn't be closed. The captain's wife was very "experienced" and helped her wrap a few times with a bandage, but the pain was getting worse day by day. She found three domestic doctors on the Internet before she was diagnosed with a dislocation. Unfortunately, there was no recommended medicine on the ship, and the infirmary only had seasickness medicine and heart relief pills.

Since it is not life-threatening, there is no qualification to stop. Crab fishing is group labor, the movement is a little slow, the scolding is small, and delaying the process becomes a sinner for the whole ship. The crabs were taken, split, folded in half, and packed, and before the crabs under their feet were processed, a new batch poured into the assembly line from the window above. Under the two layers of gloves, the bandaged hands will still be invaded by the cold. But she had to sift through it quickly and accurately weight the king crab. Each serving of king crab has a strict weight limit, and the 9.2-kilogram pointer becomes the sword of Damocles hanging over her head.

Almost every day, there are new injuries of unknown origin.

The 24-hour non-stop fishing boat is like a perpetual motion machine for crab fishing. When fishermen are drained of six hours of extreme work, the next group of laborers will come to change shifts, and before that, they only have 10 minutes of respite.

Each person is required to work two shifts a day, i.e. 12 hours, 7 days a week. It only takes two weeks to dock and unload, and at least 200 tonnes of king crab need to be removed quickly for quick sailing.

Back on the boat's Möbius Ring, the fishermen offshore no longer have a day off because the crabs don't rest.

In the "prison" monthly income of 130,000

Looking at the photos of Liu Yifan on the ship, it's almost hard to associate her with the female white-collar workers in a Grade A office building in downtown Shanghai. That's right, Liu Yifan three years ago had a delicate and decent urban life in Shanghai: 9 to 6, morning C and evening A. On weekends, I will stay at the live house for my favorite band, and I will stay all night.

This rhythm broke in 2020, she went to Norway to find a boyfriend, and planned to go back as soon as the epidemic ended, but she didn't expect to stay for four years.

The crab fishing job was introduced by a local friend. In such a fishing empire, almost every Norwegian has more than one fisherman friend by his side. Liu Yifan's boat, the captain was also a master of crab fishing, and the record set by no one has surpassed it so far.

Normally, Norway can go to sea to catch crabs from January to May, and each boat has its own crab fishing limit. But Liu Yifan's ship usually only takes 3 months to reach the quota and end work early.

Fishermen working on the boats. Norwegians generally speak English with a high level of English without any accent, while Eastern Europeans with uneven speaking skills often delay progress due to communication difficulties.

Each fisherman will receive a basic salary of 100,000 Norwegian dollars (67,000 yuan) at the beginning of the month, and the commission will be directly linked to the king crab harvest of the month. Generally speaking, each person can earn an average of 200,000 Norwegian dollars (130,000 yuan) per month. After 3 months, it will generally earn more than the fishermen on other boats in 5 months.

The cost, of course, is overtime. "When the name of the ship is mentioned, people in the industry will say that it is a prison."

But the food in the "prison" was good. Steak and cod are common pairings, and there is ice cream after the meal. When there are Muslims and vegetarians on board, the cook will make two more meals.

King crab also has the opportunity to appear on the table, but only for inspection. The first time Liu Yifan ate king crab was on that boat, "sweet, but too lazy to eat it for the second time", because he really didn't have the strength to peel the crab.

She is a native of Guizhou, and even in Norway, she eats Sichuan food every day. But when she arrived on the ship, the taste of the food became the least important thing, and the exhaustion of life had long since worn out her desire for food.

This is the only photo of food in Liu Yifan's album, and most of the time, she is so tired that she doesn't even have the strength to play with her mobile phone.

Half of the colleagues on board were from Eastern Europe and the other half were from Norway itself. However, locals often drop out halfway through, and it is generally difficult to persevere.

Liu Yifan later learned that she was recruited on the ship because a local person had withdrawn. She recalls that during the first interview, the captain just confirmed that she was not seasick and praised her, "You were born to do this". Now that I think about it, maybe it's just because it's really hard to recruit.

The captain was lucky. Liu Yifan withstood the waves on the deck, withstood the far overloaded workload, and resolved the cultural differences caused by language.

But there's more to becoming a good crab catcher.

The Arctic Ocean can't escape the PUA in the workplace

It was an ordinary night shift, and Liu Yifan was busy in the cabin. The fisherman from the previous shift was lazy again, and labeling, a task that should not have belonged to her, fell on her shoulders again.

Suddenly, the white head of the patrol walked straight over, pointed to a box of crabs with missing labels next to him, and began to reprimand loudly: "What the fuck are you doing? (What are you doing?) Without waiting for Liu Yifan to explain, the foreman slapped it down, and all the crabs that Liu Yifan had just packed were knocked over, "Give me a new job until I am satisfied."

The foreman's name is Mike, and he is an old man who has been with the captain for more than 20 years. Liu Yifan's brain buzzed. This is not the first time Mike has found fault, and the previous verbal violence is still vivid. At that time, Liu Yifan had just boarded the ship and was not clear about the process, and was reprimanded by Mike in public because of the misoperation. Liu Yifan heard him say the most, "If you can't do anything well, it's better to throw you into the sea and go home directly."

Liu Yifan recalled that in fact, before this, Mike had tested her. On the first day on the ship, after she introduced herself as Chinese, Mike would still yell at her in Japanese, "How many wows are empty"; I will also ask her: Why do you Chinese eat dog meat? At that time, she was relatively sluggish, leaving the impression that the other party was easy to be handled.

The sound of the ship's engine and the mechanical sound of various equipment rumbling non-stop, making people upset. Coupled with 12 hours a day of non-stop high-intensity work, Liu Yifan's pressure finally reached its peak.

She picked up a crab and slammed it into Mike's face, "This is a mistake made by the other team members, why don't you care?" Just because I'm an Asian girl, do you dare to be angry at me? At the end, he shouted out the F-word that had been muffled for a long time.

As a result, the other party began to prove that he was not racist, "You see my T-shirt, which also has Black Lives Matter printed on it."

Liu Yifan felt both funny and angry at the time, and just wanted to communicate with him well, Mike suddenly rushed over and slapped her arm pointing at him. Liu Yifan realized then that many times, only magic can defeat magic. So he also yelled: If you touch me again, I will sue you for sexual harassment.

Mike was visibly stunned and didn't dare to go any further, so he turned and left.

Everyone on the boat was grumpy and didn't sit down to communicate the options at all, as if swearing and violence were the way to solve the problem. Even the tagline is brutal and direct: Littering foreign objects is bitch.

At dinner that day, a crew member took the initiative to tell her, "What you did today was really cool." They were all surprised that a girl from China dared to confront Mike so directly.

Liu Yifan asked one of the new colleagues: "He has scolded you for being stupid, why don't you resist?" After being silent for a while, the other party responded to her, "Then when you finish eating, we will go to his room and strangle him."

Of course, Liu Yifan knew that this was just a joke. In the three years she has been in Norway, she has worked as a clerk in an office, a receptionist in a hotel, and a teacher's assistant in a kindergarten, and she has experienced almost the best working environment in the world – healthy, inclusive and positive. Now on the ship, Liu Yifan only feels strange, "Is this still the Norway I know?" ”

The old colleague on the side suddenly laughed. He took a deep breath of his cigarette, the smoke filling the small space, pungent and choking. Yes, Norway has a long history of punishing indoor smoking. And on this ship, it's not just the smoking ban that's failing.

"Once on board, Norway is no longer Norway".

Above the polar regions, Norway is no more

If the people on the boat are divided into two categories - making a living and experience, Liu Yifan obviously belongs to the latter, and those newcomers with relatively tight economic conditions naturally can't escape the fate of being suppressed by the old man. Liu Yifan speculated that the target of the repression may be regardless of nationality, and the real goal is to establish prestige by humiliating newcomers.

And that's exactly what happened. After that conflict, Mike never bothered her again, and didn't even dare to look at her when he passed by.

But the thought of giving up still comes up from time to time. Not only Liu Yifan thought, but several male crew members were also thinking about how to escape, and one of them was quite executive: "Anyway, my relationship with my dad is very bad, I told the captain that he committed suicide and wanted to attend the funeral, so that the captain would send a small boat to see me off."

The captain agreed, but unfortunately the escape plan failed because he could not call the ship. Someone successfully asked for leave, it was two boys, and the reason was that they were tired and their lower bodies were inflamed.

Some netizens questioned her because she couldn't survive in China, so she became an exported laborer. In fact, whether it is in Guiyang or Shanghai, Liu Yifan's lifestyle is quite middle-class and does not have much economic pressure.

Liu Yifan still stayed until the end, and she and the four girls on the boat did not take a day off. On those days of menstrual period, they will take painkillers in advance.

Generally speaking, men are responsible for crab hunting and killing, while women are responsible for sorting and packing. It may seem that men are more tired, but when you calculate the total workload, it is comparable. Men are still more willing to work on deck than packing in the cabin, which has led to an increasing demand for female workers in the crab fishing industry.

But the fishing boats weren't ready to welcome the women. Even the smallest size of gloves on the ship, Liu Yifan still felt that it was very big. Because of the gloves, many times she didn't catch the frame handed by her colleagues, causing her to return to work. Fortunately, she is 175 centimeters tall, barely enough to fit the smallest clothes and boots on board.

Liu Yifan was also impressed by the fact that there was no need to work in the two days when he went to the fishing area, but the four girls on the boat and the captain's wife were still not idle, because the work of cleaning the public area of the cabin fell on their heads.

The fishermen on the boat are mostly macho Eastern Europeans who will just lie quietly in the rest area. They believe that these cleaning tasks are inherently supposed to be done by women.

Fishermen work 84 hours a week, while Norwegian law states that a week cannot exceed 50 hours. (Photo/Little Red Book @ Arctic Ledger)

What's even more interesting is that when Liu Yifan posted her experience on the Internet, some netizens speculated and humiliated her: "A boatload of men has been going to sea for several months, and the brothers understand what the purpose of recruiting women on the ship is, right?" ”

This is a person who is more pitiful than Mike, and Liu Yifan will not come forward to defend himself. More often than not, the most attractive thing to onlookers is the lucrative remuneration of the job. The most private messages she received were: I owe a lot of money, how can I do this job, I can endure any hardship. Liu Yifan will tell them the truth: compared to hardship, visa is the biggest problem. She is even more afraid that people who are eager for money in the comment area will be cheated of money by black intermediaries.

When chatting with me, Liu Yifan's toes have always been numb. In the days after disembarking, the damage to the body showed no signs of improving. The same after-effect is that she now shuddes when she sees overalls and orange clothes. Someone asked her, will she go to sea next time?

Liu Yifan's mind came to mind, and she saw the picture of a polar bear running on the ice and a whale jumping in the sea between extremely tired work.

When you're in Norway and you can see the Norway that Norwegians can't, it's not a bad adventure, right?

Compared to the polar bears swimming in the sea, the shore ones are cuter. (Photo/Little Red Book @ Arctic Ledger)

(The pictures not marked with the source are all provided by the interviewee)

Proofreading: Meet

Operations: Hee-hee

Typography: Sweet

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