After reading the book "Biography of The Sea Tribes: Essays on Chinese Marine Life" (Lujiang Publishing House, August 2021 edition), I felt as if I had "visited" a variety of "Sea Tribes Pavilion" constructed by the author Xiao Chunlei with words.
He revealed in the afterword to the book that this is almost a book written by "gambling gas". The reason is that his wife is from Xiamen, and he is from the mountains of northwestern Fujian. In daily life, the proud mountain people are stimulated, realize that living in Xiamen, do not "understand" seafood, as soon as they are on the table, they will feel a certain psychological disadvantage, "so angry and strong, thirsty for knowledge", and finally wrote this popular science collection that integrates knowledge and fun.
"Understand" seafood, not only to know how to eat, but also to understand its ins and outs, past and present lives. For example, Xiamen's traditional flavor snacks are jellyed, crystal clear, tender and smooth, and the old Xiamen people almost eat it as a snack. But if a more genuine nerd asks them for the scientific name of the bamboo shoot, the friendliest answer is only two words: "Sandworm!" ”
Everything in the world, with the name of seafood is the most chaotic, is not the same thing, or the same name of the foreign body, a little careless to open the crown Li Dai. The author tells the reader in the book that the earth shoots, also known as mud shoots, the scientific name is coca-grass starworm, commonly known as tu shoots, sea maggots, sandworms, sea ding, sea earthworms, sea garlic, etc., mainly distributed in Fujian, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan Island on the beach. Ming Huang Zhongzhao's "Eight Min Tongzhi" records: "Mud shoots, their shape is like a bamboo shoot and small, raw in the mud and sand. Later, the "Minzhonghai Mistake" also said: "Mud shoots, which are shaped like bamboo shoots and small, are born in the river." Ugly in shape and sweet in taste. A clay shoot. ”
According to research, Fujian people use the characteristics of soil shoots rich in gum to make soil shoot jelly, which has a history of more than 400 years. Zhou Lianggong, a beginner in the Qing Dynasty, said in the "Min Xiaoji": "Yu often eats soil shoot jelly in Fujian, and the taste is very rare, but it smells that it is born on the seashore and resembles an earthworm, and finally does not know what it is." After reading the "Ningbo Chronicle": "Sand, a block of a thing, such as a dirty head of cattle and horses, can be five or six inches long, fat and soft like a water worm, headless, eyeless, no skin and bone, but can squirm, touch it is shrunken like peach chestnut, Xu Fu bloated, go salivating, miscellaneous five spicy boiled, crisp beauty for the upper taste." 'It is the one who knows what yu eats, that is, shabuya. The Min people mistakenly call it a bamboo shoot cloud. ”
It can be seen from the above that excavating and combing the fragments of marine life records in ancient classics is a distinctive feature of this book, and what is even more valuable is that the author has worked hard to identify, compare and judge, and carefully correct errors in the hard-won early historical materials. "Min Xiaoji" is a famous literati note, the author is very respected, but he thinks that Zhou Lianggong is mistaken to treat the earthen shoots as sand. In fact, Ningbo people do not eat earthen shoots, and the sand they mention refers to sea cucumbers. The reason why Zhou Lianggong mistakenly used sand as an earthen shoot was because he had never seen a living earthen shoot. At the same time, the author pointed out in the book that it is also wrong to confuse the earthen shoots with sandworms, although the two belong to the same star worm gate, but the earth shoots with the scientific name of the coca-gram star worm only bury their heads in the mud and eat soil on the beach, and the stomach is muddy; while the sand worms with the scientific name of the square star worm bury their heads in the sand and eat sand on the beach, and the stomach is full of sand. "The name of the one who eats the soil is the soil shoot, and the name of the one who eats the sand is the sandworm, which is a vivid image."
In this way, all the way to the index, combing and analysis, the author popularizes 68 kinds of marine creatures with distinct personalities such as fur seals, whales, dolphins, ugly mermaids, crocodiles, hawksbill turtles, sharks, and anchovies in the book. He wrote a separate "commentary" for each of the selected marine creatures, including relevant records in vast ancient texts, the latest achievements in modern biological research, and first-hand information on field interviews on islands and fishing grounds, telling the interesting history of the Chinese of the past generations of people who knew and used them from multiple angles, and depicting the magnificent marine life landscape in The Chinese cultural vision.
Particular emphasis is placed on fieldwork. Through the interviews and surveys, the authors also reflect on the modern variety of fishing methods and call for the protection of marine life. Therefore, as a kind of "Xiamen Marine Culture Series", the compilation and publication of "Biography of the Hai Tribes" is opportune. After reading it, I also got such an important enlightenment: to understand the ocean, we must first understand the marine life; to protect the ocean, we must first start from the protection of marine life.
Source: Fujian Daily