Chapter 677: Ye Fu Plays Favorites Too

Once his bicycle was on the main road, Ye Yaodong picked up speed.

He hadn't called any of his rowdy friends today, so no one distracted him and there were no deadweights tagging along. The whole ride was wonderfully quiet—boring, admittedly, but also faster. In about an hour he reached the shipyard.

It happened to be quitting time. When he arrived, the workers were filing out one after another, presumably heading home for dinner, and the old gateman was about to lock up. Ye Yaodong hurried over and explained his business.

The man recognized him, knew he'd ordered a boat here, and simply let him in.

But at this hour no one was free to attend to him. The gateman just trailed behind him, eating from his own lunchbox as he walked, so Ye Yaodong decided to look around on his own.

The 26-meter vessel was already taking shape—looked like it only needed paint, plus the engines and equipment installed.

The cabin above hadn't been painted yet, and the welds looked a bit rough and not very pretty, but it was genuinely spacious. Two sets of bunk beds had been welded in on each side, with only a single-person walkway left down the middle—pretty much the same as the boats he'd been on before.

It's just a place to sleep; anywhere to lie down will do. People who drift on the sea aren't about to fuss over such things.

Below, a much larger fish hold had been left—storing several thousand jin of cargo would be no problem.

He walked a full circle around the boat, then climbed up for a closer look, and confirmed that the main hull was basically done; only the engines and equipment remained to be installed and tested.

If all the parts arrived on schedule, trial runs could begin in less than two months.

Reluctantly tearing his hands away after running them over every inch of the boat, top to bottom, he turned to ask the gateman, who was still eating from his lunchbox behind him, "Uncle, this boat's almost ready for delivery, right?"

"Seems like it, doesn't it? Delivery's set for June. If it doesn't rain, painting can start in the next couple of days. Once a few coats are on, they'll install the equipment. Might even be early—hard to say."

"Ah, but it all depends on the weather. Can't say for sure—could be a bit earlier, could be a bit later. No need to rush. You don't have to wait for this boat to be finished before we start yours. The factory manager's already had people prepping materials these past two days. This one's nearly done, so the master craftsmen can free up two of them to work on yours."

Ye Yaodong was pleasantly surprised. "Really?"

He'd thought he'd have to wait until this boat was delivered before they could start on his.

"Mm, this one's basically finished, right? Doesn't need the master craftsmen anymore. Painting is the painters' job, and installing the engines and equipment later is the technicians' job."

"Great. Starting earlier means finishing earlier."

"This year there are twice as many boat orders as last year—we're short-handed. But your boat's a big one. The manager said they'd prioritize assigning people to yours no matter what?"

"Thanks, thanks. Since the factory's short-handed, are you taking on apprentices?" Ye Yaodong was thinking of how his father had been set on having Brother Brother Ahai learn shipbuilding.

"We are, but it's not for just anyone. Once you make regular, it's a skilled-worker position—an iron rice bowl. Plenty of people would fight tooth and nail to learn the trade. But the bar's high: they say you need a middle-school diploma, and they won't take anyone too old. Anything else? I'm not sure myself."

Then Brother Brother Ahai would have to wait two more years, until he finished middle school.

Ye Yaodong nodded. Next time, on a weekend, he could bring him over for a look around.

He chatted some more with the old man—asking how many boats were currently waiting to be built, checking the progress of the other vessels in the yard—and waited until the factory manager finally came peddling up on his bicycle, late as ever.

"Your boat hasn't started yet, so you don't need to come by for now. Come back and check in the second half of the year."

"Just curious, so I came to have a look. I've got nothing on these past couple of days anyway—sitting around is just sitting around. Coming to check means I can keep an eye on you too, so no one cuts in line ahead of me."

"Don't worry about that. We schedule by order, and also by type and specs. Once a delivery date is set, we do our best to finish before it."

"And if you don't finish before the delivery date?"

"Then you'll just have to wait. The weather's unpredictable—typhoons, downpours, the rainy season, any of those could delay things. There's no way to be sure. All we can do is try to stay on schedule."

Ye Yaodong pursed his lips. A classic seller's market!

"Come on, come on, let's go have some tea."

Where Minnan people go, tea goes too. They can skip a meal, but they have to have a few sips of tea.

While he sat with his legs crossed drinking tea, other people came by too—to check progress or inquire about building a boat.

Seeing how busy the manager was, rushing around nonstop greeting visitors, Ye Yaodong sensibly took his leave. His boat hadn't even started being built yet; he'd just come to take a look, and now that he'd seen it, that was enough.

His bicycle rolled along the dusty dirt road. It was fine when no tractor passed, but the moment one did, his hair instantly turned white as snow—shaking his head would send bits of it tumbling down.

"Damn it! I'll have to wash my hair again when I get home."

He'd figured the daytime temperature was high, so he hadn't worn a hat. Now, after scratching his hair a couple of times, he could feel some grit in it.

Just then, another tractor rumbled up slowly from behind. He could only grumpily endure it once more—but to his surprise, he ran into someone he knew.

The tractor approaching was Zhou Shu's. Its rear cart bed had been raised with wooden planks and was loaded full of sand.

He hadn't expected that Zhou Shu had already picked up work just a few days after getting the tractor.

He glanced back, they exchanged a greeting, but neither vehicle stopped—they kept going. Before long, the tractor left the bicycle behind.

Ye Yaodong pedaled even faster, barely keeping from falling too far behind.

When the tractor turned off into a village by the road, he kept cycling for another two minutes and arrived back at Bai Sha Village.

Ye Fu had been waiting at home the whole time. He waited until nearly dusk before Ye Yaodong finally returned.

"Why didn't you call me when you went to the shipyard?"

"I figured the boat hadn't started being built yet, so I just went to have a look. That's why I didn't call you."

Ye Fu pointed to a pile in the corner—green netting that looked like a ground cage but wasn't—and said quietly, "Your eldest uncle-in-law dropped this off this afternoon. Said he had no use for it, and since we've got two boats, he figured we could put it to use."

Ye Yaodong walked over curiously, picked up the net, and examined it. "Is this a shrimp trap?"

"Shh," Ye Fu shot a glance toward the neighbors. "Keep your voice down. Your eldest brother and Ye Ye Erge don't know."

Then, looking at him with both satisfaction and approval, he added, "Good eye. You've never set a shrimp trap, yet you still recognized one."

Ye Yaodong gave a dry chuckle. He'd never eaten pork, hadn't he at least seen a pig run? Besides, never having set one in this life didn't mean he hadn't handled one in the previous one.

What's more, his two brothers-in-law at Yang Yang Dajiu's place had a couple of crude shrimp traps of their own, used for catching river shrimp. One look at the net mouth and mesh size, and how could he not know what it was for?

There's not much difference between a ground cage and a shrimp trap—ground cages just have tighter mesh, shrimp traps looser.

A ground cage is a trap for all sorts of miscellaneous catches—fish, shrimp, crabs, and the like.

A shrimp trap is mainly for holding shrimp. Both shrimp traps and crab pots are types of ground cage, but shrimp traps have larger mesh, crab pots even larger—they automatically weed out the useless small fish, targeting specific catches. Some fish do wander into shrimp traps, but they're always on the bigger side.

Plus, this net is green. Shrimp traps are usually woven from green netting because the grass underwater is green, and a green trap is better at fooling the shrimp.

"I've already got ground cages. Lately I've felt the ground cages are pretty useless—haven't been setting them. A shrimp trap wouldn't be of much use either."

"What's wrong with having a few extra nets? Your ground cages only have four rows left—that's too few. The shrimp trap can make up for it. Shrimp fetch more than fish."

"Besides, if you lose a ground cage, wouldn't that hurt? This shrimp trap's free for the taking—if you lose it, you won't feel it much, just a bit of a pity."

"In a couple of days, if there are no storms, when you go set the gill net, take the shrimp trap out to sea with you. See if you can net a few extra shrimp? You're hiring people anyway, so tossing in two more shrimp traps is no big deal—you can earn a bit more. Since you're too lazy to set the ground cages these days, just set the shrimp traps. It's a small extra thing, and there aren't many of them here."

"Alright then, let's wait for the waves to die down and release them when we head out to sea."

His father had said so, secretly kept it for him without telling his eldest or second brother; what more could he say?

Come to think of it, the fishing nets piled in his courtyard were indeed quite numerous: there were trawl nets and large fishing nets, plus the sticky nets just dried these past two days and stacked on the cart, over ten baskets of longlines, neatly stacked ground cages, and the shrimp nets he had just obtained.

"Eh? Isn't Great Uncle-in-law a long-distance runner? Where did the shrimp nets come from?"

Ye's father whispered, "It seems they fought with another boat at sea last night and seized them. The boat captain thought these shrimp cages weren't very useful and asked who wanted them, so he took them and brought them back."

"That was truly dangerous. Their boat was quite large, right? The boat they fought with must have been big too."

Ye's father nodded. "The sea isn't safe. It's fine around these nearby waters; we haven't gone very far. Everyone in the surrounding area is from our own county and speaks the same language. As long as we don't run into boats from Luzhou Island, there's no problem. Once we buy a larger boat and go further out, we'll have to be more careful."

"Mm, we'll deal with that when the time comes."

He needed to find a chance to get a musket for backup; regulations weren't strict now, so it should still be easy to acquire.

The name Lin Ji popped into his mind again, but he mentally crossed him out. That man was a bit dangerous; better to deal with him later, after the boat was built.

Ye Yaodong picked up each of the green fishing nets piled in the corner to inspect them, discovering that these shrimp cages were also quite different from the ground cages.

His family's ground cages were rectangular, while these shrimp cages were T-shaped cylindrical cages, about 40 centimeters in diameter—quite large indeed—and had only one entrance at one end, with a lid at the other.

Ye's father whispered again, "Don't tell your eldest or second brother, or they'll say we're biased again."

"I know. Didn't they see them when they were first brought over?"

"They did. I said someone else discarded them and you bought them second-hand from a person."

"Oh."

"Cover them with nylon bags first; we don't know when we'll be able to head out to sea."