Back to 1980: Farming the Sea and Expanding the Island

"Brother Chuan, look what I found again!" the water monkey suddenly shouted, holding up a palm-sized seashell.

The shell is fan-shaped with purple patterns on its surface, glistening in the sunlight. "Is this a clam shell? It's rare to see one this big!"

Lin Chuan took the shell and examined it, his eyes sparkling. He remembered that the clam shells near the sandbar were larger than those elsewhere, and the patterns on the shells were also clearer.

Looking around, Lin Chuan spotted a darker area at the end of the river, clearly demarcated from the surrounding shallows. After the tide receded, distinctive ripples remained there.

"Come on, let's go take a look over there," Lin Chuan said, pointing to the dark area. Although Shui Houzi and Xiaoman were puzzled, they still followed him in that direction.

As you get closer, more and more seashells are faintly visible on the beach, and most of them are intact clam and hard clam shells.

"Brother, so many clams!" Xiaoman exclaimed in surprise.

"Brother Chuan, why are there so many clam shells here?" Water Monkey bent down and picked up a large clam shell, exclaiming in surprise.

Lin Chuan didn't say anything. He squatted down and used a shovel to dig at the sand and mud on the surface of the mudflats. He hadn't been digging for long when he hit something hard.

Carefully clear away the surrounding mud to reveal a flat layer of gravel, with several half-exposed clams embedded among the gravel.

Lin Chuan looked at the exposed clams with excitement in his eyes and called out repeatedly, "Monkey, Xiao Man, come quick, dig here!"

Water Monkey and Xiaoman immediately picked up their tools and started digging. After digging a few times, they heard a "crack" sound as Water Monkey's shovel hit something hard.

Slow down quickly and dig away the mud. There was a nest of plump clams hidden under the gravel layer, more than a dozen of them, each about the size of a palm.

"My God! So many clams!" the water monkey exclaimed excitedly, quickly picking the clams into the bucket.

Seeing this, Xiaoman quickened her pace and started digging nearby, soon finding a nest of smaller clams.

Lin Chuan dug along the edge of the gravel layer, and the more he dug, the more he felt it. The gravel layer was very wide, and the sand was coarse and uniform in size.

"Brother, look what this is!" Xiaoman suddenly ran over holding something.

Lin Chuan looked down and saw a large conch shell with a unique spiral pattern on its shell, and some fresh seaweed stuck to the opening.

"These are conch!" Lin Chuan's eyes lit up. "Take them back and stir-fry them; they'll be incredibly delicious. These conch only grow near sandbars where the water flow is stable!"

He stood up and looked toward the center of the dark area, where the gravel layer rose slightly, forming a gentle slope.

Lin Chuan felt a surge of excitement; he knew this was the top of the sandbar.

Just then, the water monkey suddenly cried out "Ouch!" and almost fell over.

Lin Chuan quickly went over to help him up and saw that the water monkey's foot was stuck in a small mud pit, with tiny bubbles rising from it.

"Be careful, there's a hidden pit here," Lin Chuan warned, his gaze falling on the sandy ground beside the mud pit.

There was a string of tiny footprints, like those of some kind of seabird, and a few tiny shell fragments were scattered around the footprints.

"Brother, there are so many seabirds over there! Do you want to go there?" Xiaoman shouted, pointing to the reeds where the tide was receding.

Lin Chuan and the water monkey looked in the direction she pointed, and saw several white seabirds landing by the reeds, pecking at the mud on the surface of the mudflats.

On the mudflats near the seabirds, tiny bubbles can be faintly seen, looking like traces left by razor clams.

"Brother Chuan, this looks like a clam nest?" Water Monkey seemed to remember something, and suddenly opened his eyes wide to look around.

Lin Chuan patted him and laughed, "Hey, with a shovel in hand, you'll know once you dig it open."

"Mmm, let's get started, let's get started." The water monkey looked at Lin Chuan, confirmed his idea, and excitedly started working.

"Xiaoman, come and dig around here first."

"Okay, bro!"

Not long after, the water monkey's eyes widened, and he exclaimed with delight, "It really is a clam nest! So many clams! Brother Chuan, how did you know about this place?"

"Hehe, it's a secret. Don't just stand there, hurry up and dig, this is all money!" Lin Chuan urged.

"Brother, is this a clam nest? There are so many clams!" Xiaoman's eyes widened as she looked at the mud and sand she had dug out, her face full of excitement.

Lin Chuan looked at Xiao Man and explained with a smile, "Yes, clam nest, also called hidden sand dam."

It refers to the "invisible dam" formed by the accumulation of silt and sand when the water flows into the sand gabions, which is only exposed when the tide recedes.

The top of the dam is often about ten centimeters higher than the surrounding surface, covering an area of ​​tens to hundreds of square meters. Benthic creatures such as shellfish and clams get trapped inside, and you can find piles of them with a simple digging.

In this type of terrain, every year from the start of the dry season in October, more than 70% of the tidal gullies will have several invisible dams appearing.

This landform appears every year, but the height and direction of the top of the hidden dam will change with the tides, and it takes a lot of experience to find it.

The three stopped talking and got to work with great enthusiasm.

The water temperature in October is just right, which is the time when shallow clams are fattening up.

They dug quickly, twisting open the sand top, and with one shovelful, they turned out a live clam weighing more than half a pound.

The snakeskin bags and buckets the three brought were quickly filled. Lin Chuan estimated that in just a short while, each of them had dug out thirty or forty pounds of clams.

This was only because his and the water monkey's tools weren't quite right for them; otherwise, they could have dug much more.

Just as they were digging enthusiastically, they suddenly heard Xiaoman shout excitedly again, "Brother, look what this is!"

Everyone turned to look and saw that Xiaoman had caught several more large crabs at some point.

At this moment, he was waving two large crabs in his hands, their claws waving wildly.

It's quite large, which is rare to see on mudflats.

Villagers in the distance, seeing this, immediately exclaimed in surprise, "Such a huge crab!"

Lin Chuan and the others were digging in the sand, not paying much attention, but now that they saw the big crab in Xiao Man's hand, they came over one after another.

When the aunties saw that Lin Weidong and his group had dug up so many clams, they exclaimed in surprise.

As the crowd grew larger, the entire mudflat suddenly boiled up as if cold water had been poured into a pot of oil.

Everyone stared enviously at the clams covering the ground, discussing them incessantly.

"So many clams! We've dug up a hidden sandbar!" A thin old man exclaimed, looking at the scene with a small bucket.

"This is the first time I've ever seen such plump clams!" one of the women standing nearby exclaimed enviously.

"Tell me, what happened to Xiao Chuan?"

"It must have been Lin Jifen who discovered the clam nest..." someone immediately interjected jealously.

"No one has found a clam nest in us for years. Lin Chuan is really lucky."

"That's because he's so capable; he's going to make a lot of money now!"

"The supply and marketing station is buying them for 13 cents a pound now. If you go to the commune market, they'll cost at least 19 cents. These clams are so fat, people will buy them for 20 cents."

"Then it must be sixty or seventy yuan." The young woman next to her must have studied arithmetic, because she quickly calculated the approximate amount and exclaimed in surprise.

"That's equivalent to a month and a half of work points."

The onlookers, upon hearing this, became even more envious and jealous.