Chapter 14

In exchange for this seafood hotpot, an important piece of news came up: the issue with Bozhu. She had already turned 18 this year, and according to the Tanka people's customs, she should have been a mother by now. However, Bozhu found it very difficult to get married. The reason was simple: Bozhu was an inauspicious woman. She had caused her mother's death during childbirth, and when she was ten years old, she also caused the death of her eldest brother, Bo Fu's eldest son, and his family of three. At that time, her brother was about to go out to sea, but she squatted on the bow of his boat and urinated. After that, his boat never returned.

With these two incidents, Bozhu could not get married. The Tanka people were very superstitious about the sea. Since fishing in the open sea was very dangerous, they attributed all their misunderstandings of nature to the spirits. Any disrespectful behavior towards the spirits was considered a great enemy, and no one dared to marry someone who disrespected the spirits, even if Bozhu had become the most beautiful woman among the Tanka people.

This turned out to be a blessing for Hong Tao. Bo Fu had only this one daughter. Even though others saw her as inauspicious, Bo Fu still hoped to find her a home. Hong Tao happened to come along and joined the Tanka people, which seemed like a gift from heaven. Others might look down on Bozhu, but Hong Tao shouldn't. Moreover, Bozhu seemed to be quite fond of Hong Tao. The reason Bo Fu tolerated Hong Tao's interference in the Tanka people's fishing matters was entirely for the sake of his beloved daughter.

That night, Hong Tao was sleepless again. In fact, since he had come to this era, he had only slept for two nights, and he hadn't slept at all. This wasn't because he was thinking about Bozhu, but rather about how to quickly become wealthy. Buying a boat could wait, but he needed to build a bamboo house on the shore first, and get a wooden bed. The middle part of the bed would be made of several layers of hemp rope woven into a dense net, which would be a primitive version of a spring mattress. Otherwise, sleeping on the hard wooden planks of the boat every day would make it impossible to sleep!

However, no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't come up with a quick way to get rich. The only thing he could do was to improve the efficiency of fishing. According to Huang Hai, a two-pound mackerel could sell for eight coins, which meant over a hundred mackerels for a string of coins! Even if they were all rockfish, which could sell for over twenty coins each, they would still need fifty of them! A two-pound blue crab only sold for a dozen coins. Who set these prices? Was eating seafood cheaper than eating rice? Was there no justice in the world?

He cursed, but deep down, Hong Tao knew that these prices were reasonable. This place was too poor, not just the Tanka people, but also the people on the mainland. They could barely afford to eat rice and often had to use yams to fill their stomachs. Who had the spare money to buy seafood? To sell at a higher price, they would have to transport the fish to Zhenzhou or Qiongzhou, where there were maritime trade offices. Many merchants from the mainland and Southeast Asia came and went, and they had the money to buy seafood. The more precious the catch, the higher the price they could get. If they could transport the fresh fish to Guangzhou, the price would be even higher.

However, whether it was Zhenzhou, Qiongzhou, or Guangzhou, there were many Tanka fishing boats, and the fishing resources were somewhat depleted. If they transported the fish from a distance, the boat speed was too slow. Relying on manual rowing, they couldn't travel far in a day, and it would be impossible to deliver the seafood in time, no matter how exhausted they were. If the seafood wasn't fresh, who would eat it? Some fish died as soon as they were out of the water, and their taste would change after just half a day. Relying on wind sails was even less reliable. No one could predict when the wind would blow or when it wouldn't, and it was impossible to predict whether it would be favorable or not. Relying on the monsoon twice a year wasn't enough.

Actually, the Tanka people weren't stupid. They knew that they could get better prices near big cities, which was why so many Tanka people gathered in the waters near big cities. Although the catch was less, the prices were higher, and they could still make a living.

After a night of thinking, Hong Tao realized he had come full circle. To earn more money, he needed to catch more fish. To catch more fish, he needed to stay away from the big cities. To stay away from the big cities and earn more money, he needed a faster boat. To have a faster boat, he needed to build a new one. To build a new boat, he needed money... This cycle of problems seemed endless, and he couldn't solve any of them. So, Hong Tao rubbed his eyes and decided to get up. There was already some activity outside, and he had a lot to do today. The first task was to lead a group of women and children to the beach to continue making the traps.

Yesterday's harvest had already shown everyone the power of knowledge. A small trap, plus an outsider, a young girl, and two children, had yielded as much as five boats in one afternoon, and they didn't even have to go far or work hard. If this didn't prove the point, Hong Tao wouldn't have to stay here, as there would be no future. Even the most conservative Bo Fu had contributed an old net and a new one from his boat, because Hong Tao had established a rule when distributing the catch: the three types of fishing methods—traps, rolling hooks, and crab traps—would be the shared wealth of this small group. No one could operate them alone; if they wanted to use them, they had to contribute to a cooperative.

What was a cooperative? No one knew, but the outsider's words were full of new terms. The name didn't matter; what mattered was that the more labor and resources a family contributed, the more catch they would get. Hong Tao's 30% share for his technical contribution would remain unchanged, and the remaining 70% would be distributed based on this principle. The Tanka people weren't all selfless; everyone knew how to make their families earn more.

Among the three families, the Bo family was the richest because their son was the oldest and had the most labor. If their eldest son and his family hadn't died early, their grandson could have gone to sea alone by now, and they might even have a great-grandchild. The Huang family was slightly poorer; they had just paid off the dowry for their two sons' marriages and had no savings. The Chen family was the poorest. Chen Ming'en had only one son, and his wife had died early, leaving a severe lack of labor. This was also one of the reasons he wanted to adopt Hong Tao as a godson.

Since Hong Tao wanted to use the power of these three families to achieve his goals, he had to balance the wealth gap between them. People often shared hardships but not prosperity. The inequality of wealth was a human nature. Without a cooperative, everyone could be happy eating the same poor food, but once wealth came, the distribution of who got more and who got less became a big issue. At best, it would lead to suspicion and a cooling of relationships; at worst, it would lead to conflicts, and the cooperative would fall apart, with everyone going their own way. There were no patents to restrict the use of traps, rolling hooks, and crab traps, which were easy to learn. Anyone could make them after a few days of observation. If that happened, he would be left alone, and it would take him years to accumulate enough wealth to build a new boat with only the help of Chen Ming'en and his son. Therefore, he had to ensure that everyone prospered together!