The Fish People

When I woke up at 6:45 AM to Guo's calling, I would never have guessed we would be leaving the world for an hour. Our plan was to go visit the old fishing port 5 kilometers away from Guo and Niu's farm. Yesterday I was excited at the prospect of going somewhere new, somewhere other than the paths we frequented on our daily night walks. This morning, after an interrupted night of sleep (thanks to the chatty roosters in the neighborhood), I woke up groggy, wanting more sleep, and unwilling to go to this fishing port. After all, it was just a fishing port, what could be so special about it? Fish. Boats. Fishermen. I couldn't imagine much more. I was very, very wrong. A piece of advice: never trust yourself to think logically at such early hours when sleep seems to be the most ideal prize.

We first drove to a nearby market where fishing was obviously the livelihood of most of the people there. Women were carefully unraveling nets and the smell of fish permeated the thick air. We stopped to get some breakfast to bring with us to the port. Guo, as usual, was generous and bought more than enough: deep fried sesame balls, rice noodles with pork, rice cakes wrapped in leaves and stuffed with red bean paste, and a variety of other pastries. We then drove to the fishing port, and when it came into view, I was in awe. There were about 70 large wooden boats (the size of 3 to 4 average houses in the US) crammed together, sitting on the shore (it was low tide), with barely any space in between each. Each boat had a string of lightbulbs the size of my head on both of its sides, running down its entire length. Later, Guo told me the fishermen use the lightbulbs to attract the jellyfish when they're fishing in the night. The sheer sizes and amount of boats, old and wooden, tied on shore, so close together, was almost fantasy-like. And those big lightbulbs. It didn't feel real and I had never seen anything like it. The water was blinding to look at because of the sun's unforgiving glare, but I could see a couple of smaller wooden boats with fishermen lazing around on them, hoping for a good day's catch. One guy was even paddling on a homemade raft, maneuvering easily in the water, like a fish above water. I observed this all while munching my way-too-greasy pastries in the car. After a quick breakfast, we walked down the water's edge and passed by a shipbuilding site. There were 5 guys working on 2 boats, I couldn't tell if they had built them from scratch, or were just repairing them. I don't think I've ever seen shipbuilders either. We walked closer to where most of the fishermen and fisherwomen were stationed. Most of them were so absorbed in their own work, bringing nets from shore onto boats, counting money and fish, and washing clothes in the water, that they didn't even notice us. And trust me, this is unusual in China where being a “waiguoren” (foreigner) is like having 3 heads and purple tentacles coming out from them-- everybody notices. I was taking pictures of everything, mesmerized by such new sights, when a woman grabbed my arm and said something to me in Chinese, bringing me in front of another woman kneeled over by some fish, counting money. I'm pretty sure she was telling me to take a picture of her friend because she started laughing hard and pulling her friend's hat back, and pointing to my camera. Her friend didn't even glance up at me, and continued to count money. I snapped a picture anyway to please her friend who couldn't stop shrieking in Chinese and laughing.

I didn't know at the time what captivated me so much about this scene, but thinking about it now I think I figured it out. I felt like I was a privileged guest, peeking into the lives of these people-- “fish people” as Guo called them. This is what they did, this was their livelihood. Other people were punching numbers on a computer in an office, others were constructing buildings that would be used as resorts, and still others were greeting people at air-conditioned malls. I think this is what is so appealing about life here, the life of farmers and fish people: they seem so untouched. Of course, modernization still has left a fingerprint on these people's lives, but in a very minimal sense. After work they might go back home and watch TV, go on the Internet, or text a friend, but nothing to the extent of what most of us are used to. We are married to technology whereas in this area, the people merely flirt with it. I'm not saying this is a bad thing (I love my iPhone and Kindle), but being on the other side of the spectrum is quite refreshing. So at that old fishing port, in that frozen moment, I was solely witnessing the fish people and their livelihoods and boats, passed down from generation to generation, and their raw hard work going into fishing. There was no outside world, it didn't matter to them in that moment. They weren't texting or checking their e-mail on their phones, instead they were absorbed in their work and each other. They belonged to the fish and the ocean, and the ocean and the fish belonged to them. There was nothing else.

I'll be posting pictures soon on Facebook. ^_^