When Li Long said that, not only did Li Qingxia and the others' expressions change, but the short, middle-aged man's did too. He yanked off his cap and pointed angrily at Li Long.
"Don't you frame me! I'm telling you, these fish were caught in White Soil Pit Reservoir. What nonsense are you spouting? When did I catch fish in a sewage pit? Where's there a sewage pit around here?"
"Of course there isn't one here," Li Long said calmly. "But there's one out in Sand Hollow. You certainly came a long way-
"The sewage our county's leather factory dumps into Sand Hollow has turned a huge stretch of it into a sewage pit. Plenty of fish in there, aren't there? I'm impressed you could stand that smell long enough to haul the fish out and even wash them!"
Leather was still quite valuable at the time. Basically every county had a leather factory. They mainly bought sheepskins and cowhides, though they took other skins too, such as dog, water rat, and rabbit skins.
Cities in pastoral regions also had mink farms, which brought in mutton specifically to feed the mink before skinning them to make leather coats and furs.
Of course, some of these leather products went to industrial and military uses, while others were exported to earn foreign currency.
Not many people on their side wore furs, but plenty of Russians did. The weather over there was cold, and leather coats offered relatively good protection against it.
At the time, the leather factory had no specialized treatment equipment. Wastewater from washing leather products was simply piped into the sandy hollows to the north.
The pipeline ran for dozens of kilometers. The section relatively close to the Fourth Team used corrosion-resistant rubber pipes; what kind of pipes were used