The fixed program of fishing every year is to pick a port city to eat and drink from the sea.
This year was stimulated, we found a seafood big man straight to The Zhoushan Wharf to watch the country's largest aquatic products trading market - Zhoushan International Aquatic City.
The city gates are open!
What is the concept of big?
To add some background knowledge: Zhoushan Shenjiamen Fishing Port is one of the world's three major fishing ports, and most of the harvest is traded in Zhoushan International Aquatic City. The annual trading volume is as high as 850,000 tons, the annual transaction volume can reach 16 billion, covering an area of 300,000 square meters, and if you want to walk around, you have to break a few pairs of legs...
To get a feel for the grandeur of the first-line deals (I heard there are also exciting cash seafood auctions!). We were ready to get up at four or five o'clock in the morning... But the aquatic tycoon who led the team said:
"If you want to see the whole aquatic products trading process, it is best to come at 2 a.m."
Yes, I really came to know: Zhoushan Water Industry City has no night!!
From about 9 p.m., there are fishing boats on the dock, which is the beginning of the huge trading network of the Fisheries City, and the beginning of the day in the Fisheries City.
At sea, fishing vessels are divided into two types: fishing vessels have been operating at sea, and transport vessels are responsible for bringing back the results of fishing vessels – transport vessels buying fishing vessels' cargo is the first way to trade seafood.
Until one or two o'clock in the morning, fishing boats have been coming in, and a ship has thousands of boxes of cargo, and it takes three or four hours to unload the cargo.
Dwarf oil, unloading a fat pike crab, facing the sky on its back:
The first time I saw such a spectacular seafood scene in China, it was like a sea of shrimp from Crab Mountain... We drooled as we walked around in the wee hours of the morning!
Shrimp with such a large palm are very rare in the domestic market
In Zhoushan Water City, the most common species is the pike crab - Zhejiang pike crab catch the largest in the country, the light pike crab trade accounted for nearly half of the entire aquatic city, up to hundreds of thousands of tons.
In 2016, it was simply listed as "China Pike Crab Trading Center".
As far as the eye can see, they are all boxes of big fat crabs (a basket of fifty or sixty pounds), but the pike crabs that are only a few dozen minutes offshore are full of vitality, and the crab feet are stretching out of the frame and dancing
Can you believe that such a pike crab only costs 14 yuan / catty?
Although the Jiangsu area of Shanghai has entered the hairy crab season, for the people of Zhoushan, in addition to the pike crab, there are only pike crabs!
Gentle and moving shrimp babbling (water babbling/dragon head fish), the flesh is tender, almost can be said to be melted in the mouth...
The new x-note is going to sell for 100+ a plate, here only 2 yuan a pound! A little cheaper than the cabbage downstairs at my house. ：）
120 yuan a box (60 pounds)
Another big sign in Zhoushan is the belt fish.
Oh, look at this fair-skinned striped fish, which is called a fishing belt by locals. Because it was caught in the sea, it was not touched by the fishing net, and the appearance was the best.
Of course, this season, the hottest of the Zhoushan belt fish is this kind of small-eyed ugly belt fish with scars on the body:
It also has a louder name, radar net belt fish, that is, the belt fish caught with radar nets - compared to sea fishing belt fish, the net is deeper, and the meat of the fish caught will be fatter.
Since the fishing period of the radar net is later than other fishing gear, it is not enough to eat when it first opens in August, and it is not available until the end of September every year:
Fat and thick visible to the naked eye!
Wild yellow croaker is not to be seen, because the amount is too small, it has long been booked by related households
(Even if it is a wholesale price, it is only two or three thousand.)
）
As soon as the boat docked, it was directly pulled away...
But how many wild yellow croakers are needed! The aquatic product boss said that looking at this small head and red lips, he knew that it was not farmed. Wild yellow croakers are more tender and umami.
In Zhoushan, it is actually not rare, and the vegetable farm is only 25 yuan a pound (but the micro-business will be 40-75 a pound when it is sold to other places!). ）
Compared with yellow fish, Zhoushan people prefer this delicious small fish plum child fish.
The body is not long, the meat is more tender, but the production is small, and the price in the restaurant is almost two or three times that of the small yellow croaker.
More expensive than yellow fish and plum boy fish, it is this red fruit carp, which is rarely seen in other places. Don't look at the plain appearance, the vegetable farm can sell for 160 yuan a pound! Locals invite guests to dinner and always point out a town scene.
It's even more expensive on the next door day, and it's the signature sashimi of many top Japanese food stores
(That's more than 160 pounds.)
Scientific name Akatsuki, the Japanese call it throat black (because the inside of the throat is black)
The feature is that the fat is super rich, and after steaming, the fat is too sticky to use chopsticks to clip, and you have to dig up with a spoon to eat!
Foreign vegetable farms often 30 a pound of Zhoushan red shrimp, here directly cut in half, 15 yuan a pound, but also recommended that you shop around three ;)
Red shrimp is rarely eaten in Shanghai, but it is really much fresher than Ki Wai shrimp!
See the shrimp yellow!
Moray eels are also incredibly cheap, 10 yuan / kg! If you turn around and leave after asking the price, the boss will call you in the back: "9 yuan!" Give you 9 bucks a pound! ”
A large seafood trading market of several thousand tons a day
How is it traded?
There are many and miscellaneous goods on large fishing boats, there are hundreds of boxes of barracuda crabs alone, and hawkers need up to two or three boxes, if fishing boats directly trade with ordinary retail investors, the scene will be quite chaotic.
Therefore, in the aquatic city, not only can ordinary people not enter casually, but the hawkers also have to enter the market with vouchers.
In order to better distribute seafood, the fish city has a second ring role after the fishing boat: the store department, which is equivalent to a bulk aquatic product buyer, or you can also understand it as an intermediate wholesaler.
The store department is responsible for receiving goods with each fishing vessel, and then sorting, sorting, packing, and then selling to hawkers or e-commerce channels.
The four words of sorting and packing seem simple, but only when I see it in person on the spot, I can appreciate how hard it is...
The female workers sit hunched over narrow buckets or small benches, weighing tons of shrimp with fish.
Just the radar net with fish, can be divided into 4-6 two / bar, 6-8 two / bar, 0.8-1 kg / bar and other specifications, the price of different specifications can be different dozens of pieces:
The sorting of live crabs is more troublesome:
To pick up the dead crabs first and throw them away, some of them are dying but still have a breath, and they are also decisively thrown into the garbage basket by the aunts.
There are actually a lot of dead crabs in a basket, so how much money a basket of crabs can make depends on luck...
Then all the live crabs are weighed and divided into different specifications.
In order not to let customers who buy crabs get caught in the fingers, all crabs must be tied.
Crab binding is an absolute technical task: the crab claws are folded up and turned over on the back, and the leather band is tied, and the process does not exceed 3 or 4 seconds. The skilled aunts had fast hands, and the crab flipped so fast that it almost became a phantom.
After the seafood photographed by the store department was sorted, most of them were on the big truck and sent to the aquatic products wholesale market/e-commerce platform across the country.
However, pike crabs do not eat during long-distance transportation, and their fatness is often not as good as that of eating locally.
The remaining small part can start setting up stalls in the aquatic city.
At about three o'clock in the morning, the vendors and restaurant owners of the vegetable market also began to enter the aquatic city one after another, picking and choosing among the stalls of the store department and bargaining. At this time, the busy morning of the Zhoushan Store Department finally slowed down.
There are a lot of doorways to choose! Laymen do not even recognize the fish species, insiders can see at a glance whether the red fruit carp is in Zhoushan or Fujian or South Korean waters - the price taste is different, the water is quite deep.
In addition to the daily bulk trading of the store department, the aquatic city also has a very interesting and exciting link:
Pike crab live auction!
After the fishing boat delivers the big goods to the store department, it will always leave a few boxes of pike crabs and auction them on the spot. The rule is to buy the whole basket, not to pick and choose.
All the hawkers gather around the boat and start bidding, who is higher and who buys, the whole process does not take more than 30 seconds - there is no chance to pick up leaks when it is late (cheaper than the hawkers and the store department).
See the fishing boat guy is already counting the money!
The auction process is tense and short, the vendors have almost no opportunity to talk, and the boat owner will not pay attention to the rookie problem of "new or not, how is the product", all relying on their own experience.
So you'll find that the hawkers almost all have a long metal hook in their hands. It can be used to poke crabs to see the freshness, and it can also be used to drag goods.
Chaplin of the live dehydrated city...
Look, this uncle has photographed the good goods and is ready to drag them home.
The whole basket of forty or fifty pounds, starting with five or six hundred, can be sold to 25-45 yuan / jin in the local vegetable farm, if it is sold out in a day, about Mo can earn a small thousand pieces.
To give you a bite to eat seafood
Fishermen are really not easy
It was also when I arrived at the Aquatic City that I learned how difficult it is for fishermen, so that I felt that some of these seafood were even too cheap...
The main fishing vessels, in addition to the fishing ban period and typhoons, as long as they open fishing, they have basically been floating at sea and have almost no time to go home.
Compared with the extremely high risk of life at sea, the hardship is even somewhat unworthy.
Just when taking us around the fisheries city, the aquatic products gangster saw the news in the WeChat group: there were fishing boats colliding again, and several people were missing...
This is also why there are so many KTVs in Zhoushan, one every few hundred meters - fishermen rarely go ashore once, and they must be cathartic and celebratory.
Even the food stalls on the beach can sing songs, and the boat boss blushed and sang "Myth" with a thick neck...
Transport ships are also not easy. A boat goes out to sea, and it takes 10 fishing boats to collect goods in 3 days, and sleeping is a luxury. When do you sleep?
"In a few hours when the ship is about to dock."
After all, as soon as the ship docked, it was a vicious battle: hundreds of pounds of goods in the cold storage, a box of boxes were thrown on the deck, there was no lifting tool, purely relying on manpower:
Seafood everything is fresh and fast, and every link in the aquatic city trade must race against the clock.
The crab-tie women work 12 hours a day, and as long as the crabs are not tied, the work is not over. The same action was repeated nearly 10,000 times, there was no time to eat the meal, and the fingers were in pain the next day.
The buyers of the store department and the aquatic product company are almost 24 hours a day, ready to welcome the fishing boat to the shore, directly taking the aquatic city as the home, and the pot stove in the dormitory is complete.
Most of the crushed ice shops in Chengkou are also open 24h and can add ice to customers at any time:
Even the breakfast shop outside the seafood city stayed up late, opening at 2:30 a.m., soy milk was cooked, bean blossoms were ordered, and fritters were fried.
The breakfast shop in the seafood city is also open, and the first batch of small dumplings are steamed while making noodles:
By four o'clock in the morning, the day in the city had not yet begun, and the day in the fishery city had passed for more than half of the day.
The chaos of unloading, sorting, and auctioning is over, the store department is busy setting up stalls and trading, and the fisheries companies are busy packing.
The workers finally had time to go to the commissary to buy packs of cigarettes.
Or go to the gate of the seafood city and eat a bowl of seafood noodles.
A Feng seafood noodle restaurant
The workers always added materials very provincially, and the four big men were only willing to order a pike crab.
The boss also specifically confirmed: "The four of you divide a crab, why divide it?" ”
"Just put one piece for each person!"
In addition to eating enough, the workers will also seize all the time to sleep, and no matter how noisy they are, they can snore on their heads, after all, in a few hours, they will usher in a sleepless night.
This is the day of Zhoushan Shan ShuiCheng - day and night are reversed, the date and week seem to have lost their meaning, and only the trucks inside and outside the aquatic city are endless.
* * *
Finally, I know you still want to ask: how to buy Zhoushan seafood?
Aquatic city is wholesale, the average person can not go in, basically can not find retail, so if you go to Zhoushan tourism, vegetable market can buy: recommended Donghe vegetable market, the most complete variety, the price is real, only a few dollars more expensive than the wholesale price of the aquatic city.
Many shops will wrap you a foam box, SF send it or take it home yourself.
The pike crab was brought back to Shanghai alive
Like a pike crab, a pound is also 25-45 yuan (according to the size). Crab feet can also be bought separately, as long as 20 yuan a pound!
If you are lucky, you can also meet fishermen selling the rest of the goods in the vegetable market, almost at the same price as the wholesale of the dock, like the same size of oil belt fish is 10 yuan cheaper than next door.
Some shops will sell farm-made eels, that is, dried moray eels, which are only 10 yuan a piece, and it is very fresh to buy home and cut a piece and steamed, and you can also make dried braised pork with eel.
Finally, take some shrimp and fish rice to go, which is much cheaper than buying it on the fresh platform!
We were leaving for the seafood noodle restaurant next door and saw the lady stir-frying cabbage with small salted fish. Cheekily clipped a chopstick: the cabbage really absorbed the freshness of the dried fish, and even the sweetness of the dish itself was brought out freshly.