Give up earning millions a year just for a kind of precious crab

Zhuo Qihui's farm is next to Wanning Xiaohai, an almost closed bay in the east of Wanning City, where Hele crabs, known as one of the four famous dishes in Hainan, grow. The weather forecast said that Typhoon Rainbow might make landfall, and Zhuo Qihui hurried to the breeding base to check.

Reporter: what is the function of this?

Zhuo Qihui: it mainly prevents the crab from climbing up. Its surface is relatively smooth. When the crab climbs up, it has no place to catch, and then it will slide down.

Reporter: if a typhoon comes, can this block it?

Zhuo Qihui: if the wind is too strong and the whole thing is blown down, the crab may run away.

What Zhuo Qihui breeds is the unique Holle crab in Wanning City, and now the price on the market is very high. As long as it rains, Hele crabs will climb out. At the end of 2013, two consecutive days of torrential rains flooded Zhuo Qihui's base, most of the crabs fled with the current, and Zhuo Qihui lost nearly 1 million yuan.

It was not until the evening that Zhuo Qihui finished checking all the fences. Looking at the darkening sky, he became more and more nervous.

Zhuo Qihui: the whole cloud is moving very fast, this is a very typical typhoon weather, it is gathering energy, the destructive force will be quite great. The weather forecast is not 100% accurate, as long as it has not yet landed, it can not completely relax, it still has to be very nervous, and there is still a lot of pressure in my heart.

It was so late at night that Zhuo Qihui dared not sleep. He kept an eye on the typhoon. Information from the Central Meteorological Observatory shows that the central wind of Typhoon Rainbow has risen to force 14.

Zhuo Qihui: seeing that the waves are starting to be windy outside, they are coming up now. In 2013, the impact of the typhoon was very limited, mainly due to a large amount of precipitation brought by the typhoon, which lasted for several days. If there was too much rainfall, there was no way to drain it, and the whole base was flooded. When we arrived at the pond, we looked at the pond at the intersection, and we could no longer see what the pond was like. It was as white as the sea.

Zhuo Qihui still has a lingering fear of the lessons learned in 2013. Early the next morning, when the typhoon still did not make landfall, Zhuo Qihui hurriedly came to the base, picked up a basket and continued to patrol the pond. He found some happy crabs running away in the grass by the pond.

Reporter: is it the cause of the typhoon?

Zhuo Qihui: yes, it's the typhoon. When the weather changes, some crabs will flee.

Zhuo Qihui told reporters that he would lose more than 100 yuan to escape such a crab.

Typhoon "rainbow" finally passed Hainan, Zhuo Qihui finally breathed a sigh of relief, but then he did another thing, which puzzled the reporter.

This afternoon, Zhuo Qihui and several partners came to the small seaside with a basket of big crabs and a box of young crabs. Such expensive and happy crabs, Zhuo Qihui wanted to put them all into the sea.

Reporter: are you afraid that the crab will die because you can't sell it?

Zhuo Qihui: this Hole Crab has always sold very well.

Reporter: how much is this basket of crabs worth?

Zhuo Qihui: conservatively speaking, it is worth two thousand yuan, and the young crabs are almost two thousand yuan. The amount of seedlings we put in every year is about 40,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan.

Why did Zhuo Qihui let go of the happy crabs with good sales and high prices? Many local farmers do not understand his actions.

Farmer: put the crab seedlings into the small sea, you can't catch them. The catch is someone else's, not yours. I think it's weird.

And Zhuo Qihui told reporters that this has a lot to do with his own business. What's going on here?

One day in July 2012, Zhuo Qihui and several young people contracted a 40-acre pond at the seaside to do something the locals had always wanted to do but failed to do-artificial breeding and happy crabs. Local farmers heard that Zhuo Qihui was going to raise Hole crabs, both skeptical and looking forward to it.

Zhou Yi: according to the practice on our side and the environment on our side, I don't think they can succeed.

Zhuo Xiaojing: it must be a failure. I have raised it before, but not specifically like them.

Su Zhulan: if it is successful, I will raise it with him.

Interviewer: do you mean he can succeed?

Su Zhulan: yes.

Villagers: I hope they succeed. Young people should let them succeed when they come back from college. He succeeded. He came here to guide us, teach us how to raise, and help us.

Hele Crab is a kind of Scylla serrata, only produced in Wanning City, Hainan Province, is one of the four famous dishes in Hainan, the market price has been high.

However, Holle crabs are mainly caught in the wild, and although the price is high, few local people raise them.

Zhou Yi: some people have thought about it, and some have tried, but they all failed, and I don't know why.

Villager: we have all raised it, and the output is low, so it is not cost-effective to raise this.

Chief Li of the Oceanic Administration: the price is good, but due to the impact of per unit yield, the profit space of farmers is relatively small and limited. So in this case, the enthusiasm of farmers in breeding and happy crabs has been greatly affected.

It turned out that many local farmers had raised Hole crabs, but after spending money on putting in a lot of crab seedlings, the yield per mu was only a few tens of jin, and gradually everyone dared not continue to breed. Why should Zhuo Qihui concentrate on doing what so many people dare not do again?

Zhuo Qihui is a native of Wuchang Village, Wancheng Town, Wanning City. In 2007, he went to Beijing to go to university. At a classmate reunion, Zhuo Qihui proudly introduced Hele Crab from his hometown to his classmates. During the winter vacation in 2009, he returned to Hainan to bring some happy crabs to his classmates. However, Zhuo Qihui asked the fishermen all over the little seaside and found a terrible fact that there were very few happy crabs in the little sea.

Zhuo Qihui: to be extinct, you say that as one of the four famous dishes, it is just like the rice we eat every day. You think it is a terrible thing when you say that rice is going to go extinct one day.

Zhuo Qihui is very optimistic about the market prospect of Hole Crab. He feels that he can do something, so he summons several students from high school to discuss how to raise Happy Crab together after graduation.

But to raise Hole crabs, Zhuo Qihui and his friends can be said to have no experience.

Zhuo Qihui: it seems that no one in this place seems to have developed their merits and demerits on such a large scale, so I'll try to see if I can raise it.