When people wake up from the curse of the epidemic, the world is still alive and well. Open the door, it is the season of grass warblers flying. Spring is the season of youth, the season of everything starting over, the season of confidence and optimism, the new blank page. Missed time, rush back. Urgent, but calm. ——Dedicated to all the spring catchers in Zhejiang
Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News Reporter Tang Xufeng Text/Photo
Video production by Zheng Yang
Primer
There is a chinese food culture called "Ming Qian", which is usually taken from the head buds of plants and fish before seed production. Because seasonality is extremely scarce and precious, it is truly "outdated".
Such as The Ming Dynasty Dragon Well, the Ming Front Snail, the Ming Front Knife Fish, the Ming Front Horse Mackerel...
"Spring has just arrived on the society day, Yang Huafei sent mackerel."
Today's story starts with the mackerel in Xiangshan Port, Ningbo.
What is the most beautiful seafood of the season? Ningbo people will definitely say mackerel!
The scientific name of the mackerel is blue-spotted mackerel, and for more than a month before and after the Qingming Festival, flocks of blue-spotted mackerel migrate along the tide to Xiangshan Port to produce seeds, the gonads are mature, and with a large amount of movement, the meat is tender and fat and firm. The ningbo people gave them an elegant name: "chūn wú". It is composed of chinese characters fish and spring, which can be described as a special object of spring, and is also called "Chuanwu" by ordinary people.
People in Zhoushan and Ningbo, which are near the sea, eat fish and ask for a fresh word. The seasonal Sichuan Wu washed and cut into sections, steamed with salty (snow vegetables) and shredded spring shoots, is a plate of mouth-watering "spring things".
Salted roasted mackerel.
The simple and classic way to eat mackerel is to fry it.
Fresh mackerel is cut horizontally into "half-inch thick pieces", slightly salted and slightly air-dried to make the fish firm and flavorful. Salting is the key to cooking mackerel, after light marinating mackerel meat is not woody, the texture of the fish is like shredded chicken, but more supple than chicken, has a tight and fine texture. The whole fish is dried and fried in lard in a pan, and as the fish fat seeps out, the caramel aroma overflows and fills the house.
Steamed mackerel.
It is said that Xianxiang, a thousand-year-old town located in The Yinzhou District of Ningbo, is a blue bay town that swallows "fresh" gas. This is also the closest place to the "blue ocean" in Ningbo city. In Xianxiang, there are representative seafood on the market every month, such as Mullet in January, Green Miscellaneous in February, Clam squid in March, Mackerel in April...
Catching Chuan Wu is needed at night.
This evening, I followed the fishing boats in Xianxiang Town and went out to sea to catch Chuanwu.
Going to the Sea
On March 20, the twenty-seventh day of the second month of the lunar calendar, there is a small tide, and the full tide (the highest point of the tide) in the evening is 7 pm.
At 4 p.m. on the same day, more than 10 small fishing boats were parked at Hengshan Wharf in Xianxiang Town, the first offshore point in Yinzhou, Ningbo, each with a red flag planted on it, hunting and displaying in the sea breeze.
Zhu Chunlei, a local fisherman, waited for me at the dock and then took me to his fishing boat. The fiberglass fishing vessel is 12 meters long and 2.5 meters wide, and is numbered Zhejiang Yinyu 11305. The fishing boat has a load of 8 tons and two bunks at the rear of the cockpit for 4 people to rest.
Zhu Chunlei, 41 years old, is a native of Xianxiang and claims to be the youngest captain of Hengshan Wharf. There are also three veteran boat workers on board, Namely Zhu Chunlei's 69-year-old father and two villagers from the same village.
On this day, it was Zhu Chunlei's sixth trip to sea after he resumed work.
Affected by the epidemic, this year's sea time is more than 10 days later than in previous years. Zhu Chunlei said that before going to sea for 5 consecutive days, three days in Xiangshan Port, two days to the sea outside Xiangshan Port, as far as the Putuo area.
The cabins were piled high with fishing nets. Zhu Chunlei told me that this is a flow gillnet, the fishing net has three layers, one layer of mesh holes is small, and the two layers of mesh holes are fist-sized, suitable for catching fish more than two pounds. Each net is 20 meters long and 7.2 meters high, and 30 nets are connected into a large net. There are four large nets on the ship, and when they reach the sea, the four nets are put down continuously, put up, and then put down, and they are cycled 4 times a night. It was dawn after the busy day, and the fish market just opened when I returned to the dock.
As for why you choose to go to sea at night, another reason is related to the tides. Zhu Chunlei said that it was the twenty-seventh day of the lunar calendar, it was a small tide, the sea was very blue and thorough, and if it was fished during the day, the fish would avoid the fishing net when they saw it.
At 5:00 p.m., the cable was untied, the motor sounded, and under the leadership of Zhejiang Yinyu 11305, a dozen fishing boats set off in unison towards the sea surface of Xiangshan Port in the east.
Net Release
The wind was strong and the ocean was open. The fishing boat I was riding shook its pointed body like a speedboat and sped forward. Zhu Chunlei's father sat firmly at the bow of the ship, looking ahead.
Three generations of the Zhu family have made a living by fishing. Zhu Chunlei told me that he followed his father to the sea at the age of 14, and when he became an adult, he took over his father's class and became a "captain". Now that his father is older, he has retreated to the second line to play a hand, and the matter of driving a boat at the helm and directing fishing has been handed over to Zhu Chunlei.
About 20 minutes after the boat left, the motor stopped.
Zhu Chunlei looked at the direction of the other fishing boats around him and instructed the three boatmen to release the nets. The red flag pole was thrown into the sea and stood up, the fishing boat slowly started, and the boatmen dragged the fishing nets into the water. Connected to the two red flag poles is a large 600-meter-long fishing net, which is equipped with indicator lights and locators.
"There are a lot of fishing nets on the surface of the sea, some of which belong to other fishermen, and if you encounter a foggy day, you can find your own fishing net through the locator." Zhu Chunlei told me.
At about 6:20 a.m., all the large fishing nets on all sides were released. Fishing nets drift with the tide at sea, and our fishing boats drift with them. The motor was completely extinguished, the azure sea was shrouded in twilight, the sunset stained half of the sky red, and the neon on the Xiangshan Port Bridge in the west also lit up.
The boatmen lit a cigarette and found a place to lean in and enjoy this rare moment of leisure.
Taking advantage of this free time, Zhu Chunlei told me some common sense of fishing.
This season, go out to sea to catch mackerel, the sea surface is so wide, as long as you avoid the channel, the net will be harvested wherever you put it. Although marked, the nets drift with the tides, sometimes inevitably entangled with other nets. Zhu Chunlei said that he once went fishing in the waters west of Xiangshan Port, and the fishing nets were mixed with the nets of Fenghua fishermen.
"Their nets are different, going deep water." Zhu Chunlei said.
Net Collection
It was all dark, and all the fishing boats were lit up, and the stars were dotted in the sea. Accompanied by the sound of whistling waves, the occasional experience is quite poetic.
At 8 p.m., the first net begins.
The fishing boat approached the red flag pole used as a sign, and the boatman split a tie rod across it, and there was a hook on the pole, and the red flag pole was pulled over. The other three boatmen lined up one after the other at the side of the boat, reaching out and grabbing the net, and recycling it little by little. There is a hydraulic net collector at the bow, and there are lead blocks at the bottom of the net, which require a machine to pull it. Zhu Chunlei's father stood next to the hydraulic press, operating the machine to collect the net. At the other end, a boatman is responsible for pulling the fishing net buoy at this end, and in the middle is a boatman who pulls the net, mainly responsible for cleaning up the garbage stuck to the net, such as reed poles, milk cartons, etc. Of course, his most important job was to take down the trapped fish.
Zhu Chunlei was not idle. While he is at the helm, he must always pay attention to whether the fishing net is entangled in difficult garbage, and if it is not cleaned up in time, the whole net will be stuck. Once this happened, he grabbed a knife in his mouth and went to the boat to cut the net and dispose of the garbage. In addition, if he saw a fishing boat approaching, he would take a strong photonic and take a picture to remind it not to get close, so as not to collide with the two boats or get entangled in the net.
"The fish are coming, here it is!" Zhu Chunlei in the cockpit had a sharp eye. I immediately approached and saw that it was not a mackerel, but a mullet. After two minutes, the second fish came up, this time finally the mackerel. The third one caught that night was a sea bass.
The fourth one is a big guy! I saw the old boatman take the fish out of the wire mesh and place it on the deck without incident.
I crouched down and looked closely, and found that this mackerel was almost as long as my arm, and the gross hair was estimated to be about 10 pounds. The appearance of the mackerel is really beautiful, the back ridge is green and green, shining, the abdomen is silvery-white, the head and tail are cocked, in a curved arc, which is said to be the significant difference between the blue-spotted mackerel and other mackerel.
Half an hour passed, and the first net was all put on board. I counted, a total of 6 booty, unexpectedly, according to this yield, one night down the harvest is quite rich.
However, the next harvest was somewhat disappointing.
After the first net was closed, the motor sounded again, and Zhu Chunlei started the fishing boat to find a place and put the net down again, a process that took about 10 minutes. Then the second, third, and fourth.
6，0，3，1。 Like a schoolboy, I counted the first fishing results of the four large nets: a total of 10.
It was already 10:40 p.m.
The sea breeze blows, the night is dark, and the lights in the distance are extinguished. After each trip to the net, the boatmen would light a cigarette and rest for a while. Zhu Chunlei's father did not smoke, just stood at the bow of the boat staring into the distance, took a snack from his pocket and put it in his mouth (I thought it was peanut rice, and later asked if it was broad beans).
Breakfast
After 11 p.m., I was a little sleepy, so I went back to the cabin bed and took a nap, but the rumbling of the motor made me unable to sleep.
I opened my eyes in confusion, it was already more than one o'clock in the morning, and I saw that they were still collecting the net.
After waking up, I found that the tide had receded at this time, and with the tide, the fishing boat was getting farther and farther away from the Xiangshan Port Bridge. Zhu Chunlei's fishing net was entangled with the nets of fishermen in the same village, and the boatmen of the two families took a lot of effort to separate the fishing nets, but the garbage entangled in the silk nets was too late to deal with.
This time the sea was not smooth, and Zhu Chunlei decided to return to the dock early.
It was close to three o'clock in the morning, a small boat came over, and the owner of the boat talked to Zhu Chunlei in local dialect. It turned out to be the smallest fishing boat in the area, with no cockpit and exposed diesel engines. Because the shaft belt was broken, the boy hoped that Zhu Chunlei would drag his boat back to the dock.
So, Zhejiang Yinyu 11305 dragged the small boat back to port. When we arrived at Yokoyama Pier, it was still dark at this time, and the time was 3:00 a.m.
Everyone didn't have dinner when they went to sea, because they came back early and just had time to make breakfast. So a nearly four-pound mackerel became our breakfast.
After the mackerel is cut into pieces, washed and put into a pot to cook, the pickles on the boat are always available and ready to be cooked.
Soon, one of the most primitive, simplest and most delicious pickles was cooked. It was my first tasting of mackerel, and the boatman went to the dock to buy beer, and we talked as we ate. A boatman told me that mackerel was only delicious around the time of the Qingming Dynasty, and that the price would gradually fall after that. A month after the Qingming Dynasty, Xiangshan Port is also difficult to catch again, and the vegetable market sells fishing boats from the open sea.
Freshly cooked mackerel on the fishing boat, just beer, has a different flavor.
The mackerel has no spines, is full of meat, and is delicate and soft to eat. This is my taste. Zhu Chunlei's father clipped a piece of mackerel's internal organs to me, saying that this was more delicious, which was really touching.
After drinking beer, everyone eats, and then goes to bed. At 4:30 a.m., Zhu Chunlei's wife rushed to the dock, took the fish caught at night, and prepared to sell it at dawn in the Xianxiang vegetable market.
I finally made a statistic for this trip: a total of 6 nets were laid, and a total of 18 fish were caught, including one perch, two mullets, and 15 mackerel. A mackerel was eaten by us for breakfast, Zhu Chunlei's friend booked two, he left 4 more to give away, and the rest of the fish were taken to the market by Zhu Chunlei's daughter-in-law, including the largest mackerel.
Fish Market
Xianxiang Vegetable Farm is only 3 kilometers away from Hengshan Pier. At 5 o'clock in the morning, the sky was not yet clear, and I came to the vegetable market to think about the market.
On the road at the entrance of the vegetable market, there is already a lot of people. Baskets of mackerel that came out were almost all freshly caught ashore, fresh and bone-to-bone. I inquired about it one by one, all of them are 70 yuan a catty price, into a basket to buy, fishermen generally bid 65 yuan a catty. I saw that someone bought two baskets in one go, saying that it was a boss in Ninghai who bought them for gifts. There is a female Chuan Wu with a bulging belly, weighing 20 pounds, and the hostess cheaply sold and received 1050 yuan in cash from the buyer.
Before dawn, the fish market is already bustling with people.
After dawn, I wandered into the vegetable market and met Zhu Chunlei's mother and daughter-in-law, who were selling fish.
"The biggest one just sold, 9 pounds 7 two, 80 yuan a pound." Zhu Chunlei's daughter-in-law told me that the buyer was a local boss. At this time, the bone-fresh mackerel is the favorite of Ningbo people, and it cannot be sold without worry, and the remaining 10 should be able to sell for more than 3,000 pieces.
I asked several fishing owners that the market price of mackerel this year is lower than in previous years.
"In previous years, it could still sell for 120 yuan a catty." A fishing boss told me that the price of mackerel is different every day, and when it was just listed last week, the Xianxiang vegetable farm also sold for 130 yuan a catty, but it quickly fell down, all the way down to 70 or 80 yuan a catty.
"It's related to the epidemic, and it's also related to the amount of mackerel caught." Zhu Chunlei told me that this is not easy to conclude, "At present, there are not many mackerel migrating to Xiangshan Port, which is related to the climate and tide. ”
"Three winters are not as good as one spring." Zhu Chunlei said that the timing of fishing in this month before and after the Qingming Dynasty must be firmly grasped. He calculated an account for me, two small jobs a day 800 yuan, diesel 200 yuan, a day to spend at least 1,000 yuan. Therefore, in addition to the cost, catch one more fish, and earn your own.
Fishing Town
After experiencing this trip to the sea, Zhu Chunlei and I have always maintained WeChat contact.
March 21, medium tide, March 22, big tide, these two days Zhu Chunlei went to sea day and night, each time is not very long, a day harvest also has fifteen or sixteen. On the afternoon of the 21st, he caught a 15-pound mackerel and excitedly took a picture and sent it to me.
"When the tide is high, the two or three hours of the peak tide period should be avoided, so every time you go to sea for more than three or four hours, you will return." Zhu Chunlei told me that as a fisherman, I run with the tide every day, and the work and rest time changes day by day, which is very hard. Occasionally, he went home to take a break, and basically during the fishing season, he and three others ate and slept on the boat until the May 1 no-fishing period.
After the start of fishing on August 1, small fishing boats can go to sea again. Zhu Chunlei told me that in the autumn and winter, there are more pike crabs and white crabs in Xiangshan Port, other fish are also caught, and the two rooms of the family are full of fishing gear.
"These days, when my father and I go to sea alone, we can earn some living expenses and can't make a lot of money." Zhu Chunlei said that every year at the beginning of the Waxing Moon, basically do not go to sea. Then, wait until spring to catch mackerel.
During the annual fishing ban, he mainly rests at home and also goes to his relatives' shop to do odd jobs.
"Now the policy is good, and there are diesel subsidies for fishing boats every year." Zhu Chunlei said that the town is also developing tourism, and more and more people come to Xianxiang to buy seafood and eat seafood, which is also a big benefit for fishermen.
Dai Zhenghuang, director of the fishery station in Xianxiang Town, told me that the Xianxiang Sea is the confluence of brackish water, and its seafood salinity is 2 ° lower than that of the open sea, and the freshness is 2 ° higher, and the seafood is naturally more delicious. Therefore, the town proposed the concept of "fresh 2 °" and wanted to create a seafood salty and auspicious.
"As the number one sign of Xianxiang cuisine, Xianxiang people have made mackerel a cultural festival, and this year is the fourth edition." Dai Zhenghuang said.