Back to 1980: Farming the Sea and Expanding the Island

The winter sun shone lazily on the village road as Lin Chuan and Shui Houzi walked along, eating peanuts.

"By the way, how's it going with you and Uncle Wang on the boat? That kid Jiaye says it's incredibly boring." Lin Chuan changed the subject.

"Not boring at all, Brother Chuan, don't listen to his nonsense! That kid just can't sit still. He gets bored after two days on the boat."

"Let me tell you, this trip has been quite an eye-opener!" the water monkey said, his face beaming with excitement.

"We set off from Lianxing Port. It was my first time going there. Goodness, the dock there is much bigger than our Sanhe Port. It looks about the same size as Qinglong Port."

The two walked and talked along the roadside, the sunlight casting long shadows of them.

"There are four or five cranes alone, and the cargo piled up at the dock stretches as far as the eye can see." Water Monkey peeled a peanut and casually tossed the shell into the ditch by the roadside.

"What's in there?" Lin Chuan asked, chewing on peanuts.

"The main things are just two things: fish and sea salt," the water monkey said, gesturing with his hands as he spoke.

"Lianxing is an old fishing port. Every evening, fishing boats return to port, bringing back piles of yellow croaker, ribbonfish, and pomfret that look like small mountains."

While we were waiting to be loaded, we saw the workers packing fish into large wooden crates, layering fish with ice, stacking them neatly.

"Heh, that's quite a lot. You and your dad have been transporting them there." Lin Chuan laughed.

"My dad said to ship them via two separate lines." The water monkey gestured with his signature hand gesture, "For good stuff, like large yellow croaker and pomfret, we'll just load them into refrigerated trucks and send them to Shanghai."

They said it would be delivered to grand hotels and upscale guesthouses. Ordinary goods would be loaded onto ships and transported to food factories in Nantong and Changshu to be canned.

After saying that, the water monkey chuckled, "If I have the chance, I'd like to go and see what big hotels and high-class guesthouses are like."

The yellow croaker from Lianxing Port is famous in the Yangtze River Delta region, and it was a staple dish at banquets in Shanghai during the Republic of China era.

Although resources are not as plentiful as before, the foundation remains.

Lin Chuan chuckled and asked, "Didn't Jia Ye keep saying he wanted to go to Shanghai to see the skyscrapers? Did he go?"

"They should have gone, right?" The water monkey hesitated, as he wasn't sure since the two hadn't set off together.

Lin Chuan nodded.

The water monkey continued, "And there's salt, which is even more spectacular. The salt from the salt fields, the vast expanse of white salt ponds."

I went to see it. When they were loading the ship, they used black bags with wheels to dump the contents into the hold. That trip was quite far, almost 200 kilometers.

Some went to Yangzhou, others to Zhenjiang, supposedly to get their supplies to a chemical plant to burn some kind of alkali, but I didn't understand.

As he spoke, he scratched his head somewhat embarrassedly.

"However, Brother Chuan," the water monkey suddenly lowered his voice and said mysteriously:

"My dad said that there are now large quantities of salt being flowed south secretly. He said that they heard that Guangdong is doing processing trade and is short of raw materials."

Lin Chuan understood that this was a gap between the planned economy and market demand.

Salt from northern Jiangsu, plastic pellets from Zhejiang, and electronic components from Guangdong are quietly circulating through informal channels.

"There are also goods from the north," the water monkey continued, recounting his observations.

"We saw a ship from out of town at Lianxing Port, carrying phosphate ore."

It was said to be from the Kaiyang phosphate mine in Guizhou, transported by rail to Lianyungang, and then by water to Shanghai.

Brother Chuan, do you know what phosphate mines are used for? Is it like blacksmithing?

"No, they must be making fertilizer," Lin Chuan explained with a smile.

"Oh! So fertilizer is made from phosphate rock!" the water monkey exclaimed, somewhat enlightened.

Lin Chuan handed some more peanuts to Shui Houzi, and the two ate them as they walked. Before they even got home, the bag of peanuts was empty.

When they arrived home, the water monkey greeted Lin's mother.

He continued speaking, and the old man listened attentively.

"Did you hear anything interesting on the way?" the old man asked curiously.

The water monkey thought for a moment, "When we were waiting for the tide at Yangkou Port in Rudong, our ship docked with a cement ship from Zhejiang."

The boat captain was from Wenzhou, and he spoke in a rhythmic, almost singing voice. He said that someone in his area had run a hardware workshop that specialized in making screws.

"screw?"

"Yes, those small screws." The water monkey gestured with his thumb and forefinger to indicate the size. "They say it's a machine modified from an old lathe, capable of producing several thousand a day."

He said that agricultural machinery factories in Jiangsu and Anhui are expanding production, and they can't even keep up with the demand for screws.

"Why travel this far for such a small business?"

"They say it's a large quantity." The water monkey didn't understand either, but only said what he knew.

"They said that a sack of screws contains hundreds of thousands of screws, and if you take it to the Wuhu Tractor Factory, you can exchange it for a quota for a hand tractor."

The boat captain also said that every household in their village now runs a workshop, making leather shoes, buttons, and all sorts of things... electrical appliances, you name it.

The old man listened, smacking his lips, remarking how novel it was to be outside.

Lin Chuan listened attentively.

Knowing that the Wenzhou model was quietly taking root, those peddlers who used to roam the streets and alleys were becoming the earliest individual business owners.

"There's something even more interesting." The water monkey suddenly thought of something and said excitedly, "In Upper East Harbor, we met a ship that came from Fujian."

It was packed with dried longan and dried lychee, supposedly smuggled goods.

"There really is smuggling?" The old man asked, somewhat surprised.

Lin Chuan smiled, took a sip of tea, and felt a little thirsty after eating so many peanuts.

"My dad specifically went to inquire about it, and he said that it was acquired by some kind of specialty product company in Fujian, but there were no formal transfer procedures."

The boat captain said that at the Shiliupu Wharf in Shanghai, these dried goods could fetch a high price and were especially popular with elderly women who would buy them to make longan and egg tea.

Lin Chuan laughed and said, "This doesn't count as smuggling in the strict sense."

This was the gray area of ​​the early 1980s—neither black nor white, but a variety of ambiguous survival strategies that skirted the rules.

The two were confused by Lin Chuan's words, but since Lin Chuan said it wasn't true, it probably wasn't.

"And what's it like when we get to Shanghai?" Lin Chuan asked. "What's the port like there?"

The water monkey's expression changed, showing a hint of shock it had never seen before.

"We entered from Wusongkou, and the river suddenly widened to the width of the sea." He organized his thoughts and said:

"On the left is Baoshan Iron and Steel Plant. Those blast furnaces are taller than the lighthouse on Qingpingzhou Island, and they keep emitting red smoke day and night."

"There's a dock on the right called Zhanghua something, I don't remember it." As she spoke, she pointed into the distance.

"The ships moored over there are all foreign ships. When we pass by them, it's like ants crawling on our feet."

The ship was painted with foreign characters, and I had no idea what they meant.

I heard from Tianshui that once our ship stopped at Fuxing Island and waited for two days before it finally docked at the pier.

Those two days, the river was full of boats, like a water train, with more than a dozen in a row.

The old man listened from the side, and couldn't help but sigh repeatedly. Lin Chuan could imagine the scene.

In 1980, the Port of Shanghai had the largest cargo throughput in the country.

Every container hoisted there, every ton of cargo unloaded there, is vital to the economic lifeline of the entire country.

"By the way, Brother Chuan, do you know what football is? I once squatted down next to a pile of goods and overheard it."

A few people were talking about the factory's football match, who scored the goal, who was the goalkeeper, and so on.

Lin Chuan smiled and explained to the water monkey, "Football is a sport where many people chase a ball on a big grassy field."

The goal is to find a way to put the ball into the opponent's goal; whoever scores the most goals wins.

The water monkey's eyes widened, and it asked curiously, "So many people fighting over one ball? Wouldn't that be utter chaos?"

Lin Chuan was amused by his reaction and continued, "There are rules, and everyone has to follow them."

In big cities, many young people love playing football. If our island develops well in the future, we can organize a football team too.

The old man nodded, envisioning the scene Lin Chuan described.