A New Idea

Mother Chen had not expected him to go out and come back with a handout, much less a whole bowl of meat.

"Where did that come from? Who was generous enough to give you such a big bowl of pig's trotters?"

"The brigade captain gave it to me. I went to ask him about something, and when we were done talking, he filled a bowl for me. Get another bowl to put it in, so we can empty his bowl and have Aqi take it back later."

Mother Chen beamed. "The brigade captain really is considerate. Has he kept your kindness in mind all this time? That bowl's heaped so high, there must be two jin of meat alone. It smells wonderful. That woman Li Lanxiang really knows her way around a kitchen. Looks like she cooks meat often enough."

Father Chen could not resist reaching out and grabbing a piece of meat. "Delicious! I married off two daughters, and even then I only got to eat pig's trotters twice. We're in luck today. Put some in a small bowl and take it to your grandma."

Though he was speaking to Chen Haichao, he looked at Mother Chen as he gave the instruction.

She rolled her eyes and took out a small bowl. "Fine. Give her some of the soft, tender fatty meat. Her teeth aren't good."

Father Chen nodded.

Chen Haichao snuck a piece too. He liked the ones with bones. "Have all the shrimp and mantis shrimp been dried?"

Father Chen said, "Everything that needed drying is drying, including the fish. We can't return their bowl empty later. Fill it to the brim with those big white prawns and send it back."

Mother Chen said, "Did you need to tell me that? Would I eat their meat without giving anything in return? Hurry up and take that bucket of fish and seafood to pick up Sitian. It's New Year's Eve, so she can get off work early and come home for dinner."

"Mm."

Chen Haichao had not taken a close look at the roof when he first got back. Now that he had finished the meat, he licked his fingers clean and went outside for a look. The cormorant was still on their roof.

He waved Chen Xiaoqi over and pointed at the roof. "Did that bird follow you all the way home this morning? Has it stayed there the whole time?"

Chen Xiaoqi craned his neck. "Yeah! There were two earlier, but now there's only one again. They must be Xiao Ba's mom and dad. Did we manage to make Xiao Ba's mom and dad stay?"

"That's hard to say."

"It's okay. I'll make sure to take good care of Xiao Ba, and its mom and dad too. Then I'll go to the beach every day and pick up fresh fish for them to eat."

"Remember to ask them to get their flock together and help drive a bunch of seafood ashore while you're at it."

Chen Xiaoqi blinked at him, thinking of all the seafood on the beach today. His task seemed a little demanding?

Chen Haichao checked the mantis shrimp drying by the door and casually picked one up to eat. The meat was plump and rich, not dry or crumbly at all, and had a good chew to it. There was red roe in the middle too, fresh and delicious.

People by the sea had so much seafood they could not eat it all, so they did not care for these shellfish that were troublesome to eat. On top of that, there was little fat or oil in their diets, and after eating a couple of these shellfish, their mouths would get cut and they would get heartburn.

Once dried and shelled, then sold to Master Liu to transport inland, it was naturally a different story.

There were also some large prawns nearby, laid out to dry alongside them.

This haul had included every kind of seafood. They could not finish it all, and they had no refrigerator to freeze it in. Winter temperatures in the south were not that low either. Today it was probably still seven or eight degrees during the day, and might only reach zero at night, so they could only cook the catch and leave it out to dry.

Up north, the outdoors would be a natural refrigerator and cold store at this time of year.

Chen Xiaoliu came running over and asked shyly, "Brother, when can I wear my new clothes?"

"How would I know? Go inside and ask Mom."

"Mom's busy. She told me to go away and stop getting in her way."

Chen Haichao looked her filthy hands, pants, and sleeves up and down. "You'll have to wear your new clothes at least until work starts on the fifth, right? The way you crawl and roll all over the ground, you'd better stick to your old clothes. Save the new ones for tonight, and put them on when you climb under the covers."

She protested loudly, "But then nobody will see them!"

He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her toward the house, pointing at the doorway. "Go tell her that inside."

"Hmph, I will! I want to wear them right now."

Chen Xiaoqi hurried after her. He had not worn his new clothes yet either, and with Xiao Liu charging into battle, he had to follow.

Xiao Ba was still on the ground. Chen Haichao picked up the nest and put it on the drying rack, so the other children would not handle the bird into a mere bundle of straw, unable to grow up.

"Help keep an eye on the cat. Don't let it make a mess of Xiao Ba."

Xiao Ba stuck its head out and chirped as it looked around, feeling as though it were being treated like a scarecrow.

Chen Haichao looked at the sky. It was not time for the New Year's Eve dinner yet, so he put on the rain boots by the door and went out. He needed to take another look at the salt fields.

A new idea had occurred to him.

As he walked toward the old salt fields, he attracted no one's attention. Every household was preparing its New Year's Eve dinner, those with time on their hands were playing cards, and the children at play were even less likely to notice him.

He remembered that the saltworks at the old fields were divided into separate salt ponds of varying concentrations. The reservoirs on the outermost edge, closest to the sea, had the lowest salt concentration. Seawater washed through them with the daily ebb and flow of the tide, leaving their salinity no different from the sea's.

If he claimed this stretch of abandoned salt fields, he might be able to take a few of the outer reservoirs and regulating ponds and convert them into shrimp ponds.

He could repair the outer earthen and stone embankments and turn them into sluice gates. At high tide, he would open the gates to let seawater in, with a fishing net of suitable mesh size set over each gate. At low tide, he would close the gates to trap the naturally occurring shrimp fry and mysid shrimp, raising them naturally.

Each day, he could also scoop the larger mysid shrimp or prawns out from the pond banks, then cook and dry them. That would be less trouble than scooping them up at the beach, and he would not have to stand in seawater.

Besides, converting the shrimp ponds would not be too complicated. He only needed to repair the sluice gates and dikes, and the existing salt concentration could be diluted by the flow of seawater.

He would keep the high-salinity evaporation and crystallization ponds farther inside. Their salinity was too high for raising shrimp, but suitable for breeding brine shrimp as natural live feed. That way, he would not have to buy feed. Whenever necessary, he could scoop some out to feed the shrimp fry, creating an ecological cycle.

The plan was pretty perfect. He could put up a wooden fence at the entrance to the old salt fields and lock it to keep people out, and nobody would know he was feeding brine shrimp to the shrimp.

The place was remote and desolate to begin with, as well as dirty and smelly. Normally, no one would come here.

The shrimp washed into the reservoirs by the tide could also be made into dried shrimp, giving him a steady supply to dry and sell.

Later, when an aquaculture boom arose in different places, he could dry the brine shrimp and sell them as feed, or sell them live.

It was a two-pronged approach!

He was truly brilliant, arranging the conversion to suit local conditions!

When he reached the saltworks and looked around, they were still abandoned and collapsed, just as they had been a few days ago. This time, he no longer focused solely on the brine shrimp, but on the dimensions and layout of every pond.

The outermost reservoirs had the largest surface area and sat on the lowest ground, receiving the incoming seawater directly. There were only two, but he estimated each was five mu, making ten mu in total.

When the time came, he might also divide them into smaller ponds, depending on the circumstances, and raise different kinds separately.

Inside the reservoirs were four neatly divided regulating ponds. He estimated that together they covered a little over ten mu. They sat on slightly higher ground, but could also be used to raise shrimp.

The evaporation and crystallization ponds farther back were smaller but more numerous, and most of the brine shrimp were concentrated in those two types of pond.

What the crystallization ponds had most of, in fact, was brine shrimp eggs. The eggs could withstand all kinds of harsh conditions, but once soaked in seawater or allowed to absorb water, they could hatch into nauplius larvae that looked like bristle worms. Fish fry loved eating them.

So he could put every pond here to use without spending much time managing them, as long as the brigade captain could give him some official standing.