Chapter 216: Short-sighted, human nature is like this

The next morning, when Li Long and Tao Dayong went to the Little Haizi to take the nets, there was no one at the Little Haizi.

Li Long first went to take the basin, sent the basin back to the shore, and then started taking the nets from far to near.

Tao Dayong looked at the fish in the basin on the shore.

There were seven or eight kilograms of ditch fish and small crucian carp in here.

After setting the basin a few more times, Li Long and the others also had experience. If they wanted more ditch fish to enter, they had to let the rope tying the basin be longer, try to let the basin be in the lower layer of the water, don't reach the bottom. In this way, the ditch fish that like to move at the bottom of the water would come over smelling the oil dregs, then drill in from the hole in the sock waist, and then couldn't get out.

So in this basin, most were ditch fish, big and small, the biggest was the length of a chopstick, slippery.

When Li Long was halfway through collecting the nets, Tao Dayong heard movement, turned his head to look, and found Wang Cai Mi and Meng Zhiqiang walking to the edge of the Little Haizi together.

They saw Tao Dayong, smiled awkwardly in the water, and then walked over together.

"Daqiang, where is Without Xiao Long?"

"Inside collecting nets." Tao Dayong pointed to the inside of the sea.

"What's in this basin?" Wang Cai Mi had long discovered the movement in the basin and asked deliberately.

"Small ditch fish." Tao Dayong took a handful and said, "Fried is delicious."

Wang Cai Mi was a bit suspicious and didn't quite believe it. He vaguely remembered that Li Long and his father seemed to have sold small ditch fish when they sold fish yesterday.

But what is there to eat with ditch fish? Not much meat, small size, still big fish are comfortable to catch, and sell fast, right?

Thinking that those people in the city should all like to eat big fish.

"Then you wait, we are going to take the nets." Wang Cai Mi looked at Li Long who was collecting nets in the Little Haizi, envious, but also knew he couldn't learn it, so he turned to take the nets.

Just looking at others with envy is meaningless, it's better to look at the fish he caught, which is real.

Wang Cai Mi was very confident when he came over, actually he had already seen fish on the net when he passed by the nets he set, so Wang Cai Mi was very confident, today he must be able to catch many fish!

Li Long took all the nets, row

"One, a big crucian carp!"

"Mine is a carp, and it's not small either..."

Hearing the shouting and commotion over there, Li Long and Tao Daqiang looked at each other and both laughed.

As usual, Tao Daqiang carried the three bags back, while Li Long balanced the tire on his head and carried the basin behind him.

Passing by where Wang Cai Mi and Meng Zhiqiang were setting their nets, Li Long took a look and then laughed again.

Tao Daqiang, walking in front, heard Li Long's laughter and asked in a low voice:

"Brother Long, what are you laughing at?"

"I'm laughing at them... I'll tell you in a bit." Just as Li Long was about to speak, he saw Wang Cai Mi turn his head to look at them, his gaze filled with a bit of smugness, clearly feeling that the harvest in his net was quite good.

It wasn't until Li Long and Tao Daqiang had walked two or three hundred meters away that he said:

"Daqiang, did you see how they set their nets just now?"

"I saw it," Tao Daqiang said. "One person had two nets tied together, setting them along the bank. I saw the net lines pulled taut. Did they catch a big fish?"

"That's not it. They tied both ends of the net to the reeds. In other words, they turned it into a barrier net... At the rate he's setting this net, it'll probably be torn in many places by today!"

"Ah? Didn't he leave one end loose?" Tao Daqiang was greatly surprised.

Actually, he didn't understand either. When Li Long first taught him how to set a net, he told him to tie one end and leave the other loose, just letting it drift on the water once it was smoothed out.

Now, hearing how Wang Cai Mi set his net, he realized: "That's not right, is it? If you set a net like that, the fish aren't stupid. If they hit something hard, won't they run?"

"That's exactly the point. You have to set a net with one end loose and one end tied. This is a gill net, not a barrier net. If a fish hits the net, it will naturally try to run. If you tie both ends of the net, the water current will pull it tight. Even if the fish is stupid, it knows that's an obstacle, so it will naturally run away if it touches it.

If one end is loose, the net is in a slack state. When a fish hits it, by the time it realizes what's happening, it's already caught in the net. The more it struggles, the more the net tangles around it..."

Tao Daqiang finally understood. Li Long had unintentionally taught him the key to setting gill nets.

Once explained, it was just a thin layer of window paper, but for many people, it might take a heavy price to break through that layer.

Some people might never break through it in their entire lives.

"But I saw they caught fish in their nets too..."

"That's because there are so many fish in our little lake," Li Long laughed. "Wait until they take in their nets today; you'll see. The fish in their two nets might not be as many as in one of ours."

Tao Daqiang shut his mouth.

He was determined to keep this secret, even from his own father.

Li Long hadn't told him to keep it secret, but Tao Daqiang was afraid.

He had already caused trouble twice; by all logic, anyone else would have driven him away long ago.

Brother Long was kind, which was why he still let him work with him, but he couldn't do such low-class things again.

The two returned to the Li family, panting with exhaustion, but they only wiped off their sweat and began sorting the fish.

The Li family joined in, first pouring the small ditch fish into the basin and picking out the dead ones and the small crucian carp.

Over there, Li Long had already started sorting the big and small fish from the net.

"Little Long is still the best; there are so many big and small fish in this net every day!" Liang Wenyu praised.

"Did you run into Wang Cai Mi?" Li Jianguo asked while carefully sorting the fish.

He was much more careful than Li Long, trying his best not to break even a tiny thread. Li Long was different; he was clumsy. If the fish wouldn't come off, he would just tear the fine threads of the gill net. This made Li Jianguo frown from time to time—what a waste!

However, since his younger brother could earn money, he had nothing to say. Frowning was purely the reaction of someone used to frugality who couldn't stand waste and destruction.

"I saw him," Li Long suddenly laughed, throwing the big crucian carp he was holding to the side. The fish flopped a couple of times, and Li Long said:

"Wang Cai Mi tied both ends of his net, setting it like a barrier net... Hahahaha..."

"What? How could he set it like that?" Li Qing Xia was also surprised when he heard this. "How can you set a gill net like that?"

"They've never set nets before," Li Jianguo shook his head and said. "Never mind him; more than half the families in our team have never set a net, and a third of them don't even know how to eat small fish. When the earliest team members lived here, we saw plenty of fish in the roadside ditches when we arrived, but they would rather eat wild vegetables than fish. We asked them why, and they said they could taste big fish, but small fish had too many bones and didn't taste good."

"That's really..." Li Qing Xia was speechless.

"It's just being picky," Du Chunfang muttered while sorting fish. "If you go hungry for three or five days, what wouldn't you eat?"

Li Long thought his mother's way of thinking was quite interesting, but thinking of the people who had lived through that era, they had truly known hunger, and the urge to laugh vanished immediately.

People who have never known hunger have no right to judge these elders who have walked all the way with the Republic.

"Did you tell him?" Li Jianguo asked. "No, if he doesn't ask me, I won't say a word," Li Long said, lifting his head. "Skills shouldn't be sold cheaply or taught lightly. If I tell him directly, he'll just think it's nothing. Only when he takes a tumble or comes to ask for advice with an open mind will I be able to tell him."

"That's the right principle." Li Jianguo was very gratified; his younger brother now understood the ways of the world.

This wasn't about being mysterious; it was mainly because even if you took the initiative to tell him, he wouldn't think you were helping him—some people are truly not worth helping.

Kindness must also be used in the right places.

Once the fish were sorted, Li Long changed his clothes. When he came out, Li Jianguo and Tao Daqiang had already tied the fish bags to the back seat of the bicycle.

Li Qing Xia was a bit worried and asked Li Long:

"Then you, alone..."

Li Long patted the gun bag on his back and said:

"Father, with this thing here, I'm not afraid even if ten or eight come!"

"Alright then." Li Qing Xia nodded, feeling reassured, but still gave a word of advice: "Even if you have the status, don't take that thing out easily."

"I know that." Li Long reassured his father.

Taking Li Juan with him on the bicycle out of the village, he saw Wang Cai Mi and Meng Zhiqiang also walking out in a hurry with sacks on their backs.

!.

"Having a bicycle is really great!" Meng Zhiqiang said, looking at Li Long's back with great envy.

This ten-kilometer road to the county town took Li Long thirty or forty minutes to ride, while they had to walk for over an hour.

"Look at how many fish Li Long has in that bag; why do we have so little?" Meng Zhiqiang asked another question when he saw Wang Cai Mi wasn't speaking.

"He set his net in the middle of the lake, where there are naturally more fish. We set ours on the edge, so it's only natural there are fewer fish."

Although Wang Cai Mi explained it this way, and it was quite reasonable, he wasn't convinced in his heart.

Two nets, and the fish they caught added up to less than five kilograms; the biggest one was a carp of less than a kilogram. Although they were talking about "one after another" at the little lake, they had actually only caught those few fish.

Wang Cai Mi was very unwilling to accept this.

Why did the Li family's Little Long catch so many fish?

Should he ask when he gets back, or maybe ask the old people in the team who know how to fish?

He thought as he walked forward. Both of them were carrying a urea sack on their backs and holding an enamel basin in their hands; this was for "weighing" the fish. Neither of their families had a scale, and they had heard about using this from others.

The fish in the urea sacks were wet, and water droplets ran down the corners of the bags, quickly soaking their backs. It was sticky and very uncomfortable.

But they couldn't worry about that anymore.

Earning money while they were free was the real business. In fact, since they started buying nets, some people in the team had been laughing at them behind their backs, thinking they were overestimating their abilities and trying to learn from Li Long.

But at this point, the arrow was on the string and had to be fired. The money for the nets had been spent, and the fish had been caught; if they didn't go sell them, they wouldn't know where to hide their faces.

When the two arrived at the county market, the sun had been up for quite a while. Some people had already packed up their stalls, so they quickly found a spot each, put down their fish bags, untied them, took out the fish, and put them in the basins.

The basins were small and the fish weren't very big; one basin held one fish, and even then, they were picking the live ones to put in.

Meng Zhiqiang was too shy to shout, and while Wang Cai Mi wasn't afraid, he hadn't done it before and was a bit stage-frightened.

Just then, someone came over to ask for the price, and he immediately said:

"Fish... one yuan per basin."

"Selling by the basin?" Hearing that it was sold by the basin, the man found it novel and asked with a smile: "Does it not matter what size or species of fish?"

At this point, Wang Cai Mi knew he had been reckless, but he didn't have a real idea of how much each type of fish should sell for, so he went by his own understanding:

"Carp is one yuan a basin, big crucian carp is eighty cents, silver carp is seventy cents..."

"Alright, alright, give me two basins of big crucian carp—" the man was happy.

Having made a sale right away, Wang Cai Mi started to smile.

Someone also approached Meng Zhiqiang. He set an even lower price—seventy cents a basin—and he said it in a low voice, afraid that Wang Cai Mi would find out and scold him.

But who cared about that now? Selling the fish was the real business.

As a result, in less than half an hour, both of their fish were sold out.

"How much money did you make?" After packing up the bags, Wang Cai Mi ran over to ask Meng Zhiqiang.

"Three yuan and thirty cents, how about you?" Meng Zhiqiang was still excited.

"Four yuan and twenty cents... why did you sell yours so cheap?"

"Well, there were a few dead fish..." Meng Zhiqiang felt a bit guilty. "They had to be cheaper, otherwise people wouldn't want them."

"That's fine too." Wang Cai Mi calculated: four yuan—not bad. Four yuan a day, that would be one hundred and twenty a month... wouldn't that be more than two workers?

"Then are we coming back tomorrow?" Originally, on the way, he had thought that if they couldn't sell them, he wouldn't catch any more, but now that thought was completely gone. He said excitedly to Meng Zhiqiang, "Think about it, three or four yuan a day, a month would be..."

"One hundred!" Meng Zhiqiang also realized. "Doesn't that mean we're making the wages of two workers a month! No wonder Li Long catches fish to sell every day..."

At the mention of Li Long, Wang Cai Mi felt a bit discouraged again: "He makes more than us!"

"That's true, those three bags must have been forty or fifty kilograms... that would be..."

The two looked at each other, and their expressions changed.

"I'm going to buy another net!" Wang Cai Mi wasn't excited anymore. "This path is right, and no one is checking. This money is easy to earn!"

Meng Zhiqiang had originally planned to pay back Wang Cai Mi's debt with the money he earned today, but when he saw Wang Cai Mi going to buy a net, he gritted his teeth and said:

"I'm going to buy a net too!"

The two went excitedly to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy nets, and then went home.

They didn't dare to eat a meal at the meat canteen; they had to save the money for something important later!

Wang Cai Mi had already set his goal on a bicycle. He would try to earn enough money in a month to buy one!

Over the next few days, everyone in the team knew that Wang Cai Mi and the others had earned money catching fish, and they hadn't been caught. The county was even encouraging setting up stalls for small businesses.

Those who wanted to earn some extra money immediately became active.

If others can catch fish, we can too!

Consequently, the number of people in the team catching and selling fish increased.

And in the market, the price of fish was pushed down to fifty cents per basin (kilogram).

After hearing this news, Li Long felt that at least this matter was about to come to an end. It would be chaotic, but after the chaos, order would be restored.

Survival of the fittest, after all.

Thanks to book friends Wukong Babujie and 20220209184610225 for their tips, thanks to everyone for their subscriptions and recommendation votes, and even more thanks for everyone's monthly votes.

Qidian has a rule that you can draw a ticket for every thousand monthly votes. Yesterday, I was two hundred short of four thousand, so I asked for votes a little bit, and I didn't expect... thank you very much!

Today is the anniversary of the founding of the Party. It is said that our generation doesn't feel it too obviously, but the older generation says they feel it very clearly. Although society today has its shortcomings, in their eyes, it is a earth-shaking change compared to the past. It is a change that is truly unimaginable. To be honest, as the old man Li Qing Xia said, let alone landlords, even the big officials of the past didn't eat or dress as well as people do now!

Thanks to the Party, thanks to the teachers, and thanks to the dedication of that generation, I can sit here and write in peace.

Gratitude.

(End of chapter)