Fisherman Fubao made his fortune by fishing

During this era, life was very difficult for the islanders.

They have no land or house and live in black-sailed boats all their lives. People jokingly call them "water passengers".

They make a living by fishing. They go out to sea to fish before dawn every day. When the sun rises to the middle of the day, they need to row their boats to the fish market at Yuge Wharf to sell the seafood while it is still fresh.

The Cangyuan Dynasty, as the name suggests, is a large coastal country with a long coastline. The thing this country has the most is seafood.

Therefore, seafood cannot be sold at a high price, and fishermen’s income is very limited, barely enough to make ends meet.

Because of poverty and difficult life, the islanders also have difficulty getting married.

Most of the islanders eventually absorbed it themselves, with the exception of intermarriage among the several fishing villages along the island.

For example, there are several relatively large villages on Rabbit Island, including Tuwozi Village, Houhai Village, and Qianshi Village.

There is a larger island to the south of Rabbit Island, called Fanjiatuozi. The original owner’s mother, Fan Xiaojuan, married from Fanjiatuozi.

The original owner's grandmother, Cai Guihua, married from Fuzhou Bay, an inland bay across the sea from Rabbit Island. Almost no girls from the land were willing to marry on the island.

Why did Old Mrs. Cai marry into the family back then?

It's fate.

Cai Guihua's mother's family is from Fushui Village, Fuzhou Bay. She has only one younger brother in the family. Her parents are very good to both of them and do not overly favor boys over girls. This also cultivated Cai Guihua's competitive character since childhood.

She is outspoken and likes to stand up for the weak. She didn't know who she offended, and was rumored to have difficulty in giving birth.

Plus, she was very thin, only about 1.5 meters tall, and gradually, people around her began to believe it.

She was born with dark yellow skin, small eyes, a long face, thin lips, and speaks fast and harshly. People from the north sit cross-legged all year round, and their legs are prone to become bow-legged.

With this appearance, I have been rejected politely several times on blind dates.

Thus, a vicious cycle began. When she was 18 years old, Cai Guihua still hadn't settled down, which made her parents very worried.

Seeing that her brother is about to get married, this will cause gossip.

So, she secretly made a promise to the matchmaker: she would not have to give a betrothal gift, but would give a dowry worth at least five taels of silver.

At that time, the betrothal gift for an ordinary family was no more than two taels of silver, and the dowry was generally around one tael of silver.

Five taels is enough to marry two wives in a lively manner.

Her mother also gave the matchmaker a big red envelope. Money talks, and with the matchmaker's eloquence, she really found a suitable family.

Li Youcai was not young anymore, he would be eighteen the next year, but there were three brothers in his family and only two boats. There was no way to divide the two boats, three sons.

They are islanders, they have no house, no land, and even no boat. And you want their daughter to marry here and occupy the land.

It happened that at this time, the seventh aunt who had married to Fuzhou Bay came back to visit the grave, and the two of them had a conversation.

The nephew from the next room is also a relative. Based on the principle of keeping things within the family, he wanted to bring the two of them together.

So, Li Youcai put on the only pair of fine cotton trousers in Old Li's family and went out of the island for a blind date.

The blind date went smoothly, although Mrs. Cai's parents were somewhat resistant when they learned that the other party's family didn't even have enough boats.

I can't help but feel that the girl is willing.

Out of guilt, even though their son was still studying, the Cai family prepared a generous dowry for their daughter. In addition to the five taels of silver promised before, there was also a set of silver headwear.

A silver hairpin, silver earrings, a silver bracelet, and five taels of silver. This is the first of its kind in a fishing village, not even the wife of the clan leader has one.

This is also one of the reasons why Cai Guihua was able to stand tall after marrying into a fishing village.

As soon as Cai Guihua got married, she used her dowry to buy a black-sailed boat for Li Laoer, so that the third brother could finally get a share of the family property, which was equivalent to the second wife leaving the house with nothing.

Out of guilt, the two old people treated her very well.

The next year, Cai Guihua gave birth to a big fat boy for the Li family. In the end, she gave birth to three sons, and all of them became independent women.

In ancient times, the child mortality rate was very high, especially among fishermen who had no houses by the sea.

Therefore, Cai Guihua's position in the family is very stable. Li Youcai has a dull personality and doesn't like to meddle in other people's affairs, so she is the one who makes the decisions on all matters big and small in the family.

Both husband and wife are hardworking people, willing to endure hardships and work hard.

Even so, how much money can be saved by selling fish.

With three sons, they need three ships to start a family and a career.

After saving for more than ten years, they were able to buy a small black-sailed boat for the second son to start a family. This was the boat that the original owner's father sold when he had an accident.

Li Yuer's third uncle is fourteen years old this year. He will become an adult next year, and when he becomes an adult he will have to take fishing lessons.

Fish tax is a kind of fish tax levied by the government on fishermen who make a living by fishing along the coast.

According to the head tax, each adult (male) received twenty coins a year.

The tax is collected before the ships go out to sea in the spring, which is a pre-tax payment.

This time when the Li family got into trouble, the fish tax was used to pay for the medical expenses.

I don’t know what to do next spring.

The Chinese New Year is less than a month away, but there is no sign of joy in the Li family. They are like the gloomy sky after a typhoon, shrouded in heavy clouds of sorrow.

Li Yu'er didn't want to stay in the damp and dark cabin, she wanted to go out and find a way to survive.

As the saying goes: live by the mountain, eat from the mountain; live by the sea, eat from the sea.

She did it right away, enduring the cold and getting up.

She occasionally felt a slight pain in the back of her head, but it did not affect her movements, so she thought it was nothing serious.

I looked around the bed, but didn’t see any thick winter clothes?

She began to search in the small wall cabinet separated by the wooden boards of the cabin, and finally found only a tattered cotton jacket full of patches.

I touched it and it wasn't soft, but rather prickly. It turned out to be a reed-feather jacket.

The only women's cotton jacket in the house was a faded red jacket that came as a dowry to Old Lady Cai.

My eldest cousin took me to the town's clinic.

Her mother, Fan Xiaojuan, needed someone to serve her during childbirth, and it should have been her aunt-in-law who went.

But Old Mrs. Cai knew her eldest daughter-in-law's personality. She was too cowardly and was useless when she went to the town to sell fish on weekdays. Childbirth is a big deal for a woman and she can't be relied on.

My eldest cousin has lived with my grandmother since she was a child. Her personality is not like her mother's, but rather like her grandmother. She is hardworking, decisive and strong-willed, and a capable girl.

It’s just a reed-flowered jacket, it’s better to have one than nothing.

Now that I have a jacket, pants become a problem because I don’t have cotton pants.

Finally, Li Yuer was wearing a headscarf that she had found, with a torn strip of old child's clothes wrapped around her hands. Her pants were seven or eight pairs of trousers, which were tattered and had loose legs, and the cold wind blew straight into her pants.

Helplessly, she could only tear the remaining strips of cloth from her small clothes and use them as leggings, which made her feel a little better.

Shoes, a pair of cloth shoes with exposed big toes. She lined them with rags and wore a pair of straw sandals on the outside.

Outside, Old Mrs. Cai was leading her aunt-in-law to mend the nets.

Ancient fishing nets did not have strong nylon ropes, most of them were woven from hemp ropes soaked in oil for reinforcement.

Seafood with hard shells is easily damaged and needs to be repaired frequently. Most women on the seaside can repair their nets.

Winter is the best time to mend nets and repair fishing gear.

When the curtain was opened, Old Lady Cai looked over and asked, "What's wrong? Are you feeling uncomfortable?"

Old Mrs. Cai's heart skipped a beat, fearing that something might happen to her granddaughter again.

This family can't withstand any storm now.

She saw what happened that night very clearly. A hit to the back of the head could be a big one or a small one.

There used to be an old fisherman in the village. When he jumped from the boat to the shore, he slipped and fell backwards.

The back of his head hit the side of the boat, and it only left a bump, so I thought he was fine. The next morning, his family couldn't wake him up, and when they touched him, he was already cold.

Li Yuer rolled his eyes and didn't tell the truth. He responded, "I want to relieve myself."

Upon hearing this, Mrs. Cai nodded and continued to mend the net with her head down.

Worried, she shouted to her granddaughter, "Come back quickly, don't catch a cold."

Li Yuer thought to herself that she couldn't go back quickly, so she said casually, "I'm going to go talk to Haiya."

Old Mrs. Cai frowned and was about to scold, asking what was going on at home and why were you going out to play?

After all, he is just an eight-year-old kid and doesn’t know anything.

But then I thought, maybe he was going to complain to his sisters.

When she was a girl, if she had something on her mind that she didn't want to tell her family for fear of embarrassing them, she would talk to her younger sisters, and she would feel much better.

But he still shouted worriedly: "Come back soon!"

"understood."