Chinese are probably the most passionate people in the world that love crabs. Chinese literati said: Crabs are delicious, and everyone loves them, no matter how far they are, they are not distinguished from elegance or vulgarity. Especially when it comes to the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day stalls, the plump hairy crabs are affecting the taste buds and thoughts of many people.
In China, when it comes to crabs, Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs must be on the list. In fact, these six words are connected together and have long become a national geographical indication product of China. The total sales of Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs exceeded 70 billion in 2020. A small crab is a big leverage of to leverage the local economy.
My name is Daniu, from the UK. I am very curious about how the famous Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs were breeded? Over the years, has the ecology of Yangcheng Lake changed? Generations of crab farmers have their own unique skills to raise crabs?
In this issue of "A Review of China in a Recent View", let's go to Yangcheng Lake with me to have a look.
First of all, I want to visit here is The older generation of crab farmers . I found the most famous crab-raising top scholar in Yangcheng Lake - Yu Sannan .
Yu Sannan has been more than 20 years old. In the past twenty years, he has cultivated himself from a crab farmer to an expert little by little.
I followed Yu Sannan to try crabs. Judging from their fangs and claws, this is the first batch of hairy crabs in Yangcheng Lake this year.
Yu Sannan taught me that to distinguish between female crabs and male crabs, we must see whether their navel is round or sharp; and to see if a crab is healthy, you can press its hind legs. If it presses hard, it means that the crab is very strong.
For many years, Yu Sannan has witnessed many changes in Yangcheng Lake. From retail farming in the late 1960s to artificial farming in the 1970s and 1980s, to the later seine breeding pilot, the importance of ecological problems in recent years...
Why can Yu Sannan become the " crab top "? What I want to rely on is his constant attempts and self-challenge. When most crab farmers were still on the idea of raising crabs by relying on the weather, Yu Sannan began experiments to improve the growth environment of crabs. He tried to grow kettle , put snails, transplant elica for crabs, and also tried to grow kebab .
button crab is a button-sized young crab. Cultivating and cultivating crabs requires a lot of money and effort.
At first, the villagers didn't understand because no one tried these. But later, Yu Sannan succeeded and his breeding methods were scrambled to imitate.
I was deeply impressed by the persistence of the older generation of crab farmers. I also want to know, how do young people raise crabs nowadays?
I heard that because raising crabs is very bitter, it is dangerous and exhausting, young people are reluctant to raise them. However, there are still some people who are doing such a job.
Gu Min is a post-80s . After graduating from university in 2009, he went to a state-owned enterprise to look for a job and found other jobs under the recommendation of others, but it did not go smoothly. Seeing that the hairy crab industry in Yangcheng Lake in his hometown was developing vigorously, Gu Min decided to return to his hometown to start a business.
In order to raise and sell crabs well, he has tried many methods. For example, e-commerce logistics is now developed, and long-distance delivery of crabs has become an unavoidable problem. Gu Min felt that traditional foam boxes were easy to break, so he thought of a new packaging method.
Gu Min: At that time, we added a purse weaved from reeds to the crab, and put an ice bag in the box. In order to prevent the crab from reacting with stress, some aquatic plants were also added to simulate its ecological environment. Unexpectedly, the ice pack is prone to puncture during transportation, and the leak is full of sticky water, which also loses the insulation effect.The straw bags and aquatic plants also rotted. When the customer received the goods, they smelled a foul smell. He called to complain, causing us a lot of losses.
How can customers get satisfied, assured and fresh Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs? Gu Min developed a "traceability system" for crabs.
At the place where we station, there is a camera at every point, and the breeding of every crab can be seen.
Gu Min: Once, when we were having a meal in a restaurant, we saw a scene in the kitchen playing on the big screen. The concept at that time was a "transparent kitchen". So we also want to say, can we put this camera in our lake and make the breeding situation public? So at that time I thought of the concept of transparent traceability.
started from scratch. Gu Min and his friends didn’t know what to do, so they started by rechargeing gold coins on the online technology forum to ask experts. They spent nearly one million yuan in R&D expenses and finally made the system. In August 2019, this system was granted a national patent and is currently being used for free by cooperative crab farmers and consumers.
Gu Min's many measures, such as the attempts of the popular e-commerce platform now, are not very understanding of the older generation of crab farmers. They think that the crabs in Yangcheng Lake are of high quality and small quantity, so they can be sold naturally. But Gu Min believes that e-commerce is just a tool. Through this tool, it is the key to create the brand of Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs, form the brand effect, and transmit it to the outside more broadly.
On the trip to Yangcheng Lake, I not only tasted the hairy crabs I just caught from Yangcheng Lake, but also saw from local crab farmers that the success of Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs is not only the inevitable result of the superior natural conditions of Tianci Lianghu Lake, but is attributed more to the courage to innovate, share selflessly, tirelessly develop craftsmanship, and diligent exploration of new markets.
Editor: Chen Xinyi
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