During this period, I was asked by the two old glasses to accompany them to the toilet several times, they were obviously drunk, hooked shoulders in the corridor and spoke ambiguously, causing everyone to look sideways, I pretended to be a passer-by to follow them in the bathroom to smoke, look at their smoking posture, the cigarette butts are so hot that they are burning, just this strength, enough for three mouthfuls to get lung cancer.

Accompany them to return happy, I asked Lao Lu to send us back to the three-bedroom apartment, tomorrow starting by Zhao Weiguo as the host to lead the old Xi family around, before leaving Xi Bufan told me that I will visit my old man in a few days, let me talk to home.

I also mentioned to Su Er and Min Ziqin that Uncle Xi seems to have something to deal with in the past, because this time I went to Xi's house, so let Min Ziqin and Sister Yu ask for a leave to go together, for insurance, the second uncle also has to take it with me, I said that when the time comes, I will have to handle the pet consignment, the second uncle is obviously not satisfied with the description of the pet, Su Er said if the second uncle can bypass the security check, it will be no problem.

After a few days, just in time for the Midyear Festival, we bought the tickets, and the customer service team led the Xi family and the couple back to my house together, and the second uncle finally knew what the security check was, and he shrank his body a little more disdainfully, and easily entered the waiting hall, Su Er found a place where no one was and put it in his bag.

In fact, to put it mildly, Su Er and I went home in the group, Xi Fan and Min Ziqin both came back for the first time, and they said hello before, and my mother began to prepare early in the morning. After some pleasantries, it was a hearty lunch.

Because it was in my house, the old rascal, ah no, the old man gave up the second uncle to the main position, and everyone present felt that it was taken for granted, and my mother didn't care about this at all, knowing that there were guests to celebrate the festival together, and prepared a large table of dishes.

During the dinner, we chatted about the home cooking on both sides, and after the meal, Aunt Shen went to the kitchen with my mother to clean up, they had known each other before, and they were not very polite. I lit a cigarette for the old man and asked, "Uncle Xi, tell me about what you wanted to tell me in the car last time, it just so happens that there are all people today, and my old man is also here, so he can give it to the staff officer." ”

Xi Bufan nodded, "Actually, it's not a big deal, but I just feel weird, I just came here this time, I thought I would let you help investigate, my father meant, if it's really a monster, then you have to go according to the process, it should be mediated, it should be handled, and it is not appropriate for us to solve it ourselves." ”

The Xi family, originated from the monster cod, has been developing in the coastal area since giving up the demon grid, mainly engaged in the aquatic industry, and now it is already quite large-scale, which we have heard before. The thing Xi Bufan wants to talk about is one of their family's many industries, pearl diving.

Pearl diving is a fairly ancient craft, there are clouds in the "Zhuangzi Collection", the pearl of the husband's daughter, must be in the abyss of the nine and under the dragon's jaw. The pearl of gold mentioned here does not refer to pearls in the current sense, but to pearls, but to use pearls to describe the danger of pearl diving, which is very in place, and this industry is simply exchanging lives for pearls.

Pearls, as we know, are mainly produced in the body of pearl shells, and the mineral beads containing calcium carbonate produced by endocrine action are the only gemstones in the world that are bred by living life, and they are also the only gemstones in the world that do not need to be processed, and are naturally formed, known as the queen of jewelry.

Shellfish that can give birth to pearls are found in both seawater and freshwater, and in China, for example, natural pearls produced in the Heilongjiang and Ussuri River basins in the northeast are called Dongzhu and are the favorite of the Qing Dynasty royal family. The world's highest-quality pearls are saltwater pearls that grow in the sea, and all of China's saltwater pearls are produced in the South China Sea, so they are called southern pearls.

The main production area of Nanzhu is the coastal area of Hepu County in Guangxi, and it is impossible to know when the pearl diving industry in the South China Sea began, but it was formed in the Shang and Zhou dynasties and flourished in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, but there are historical data to check. From the Shang and Zhou dynasties to the Tang and Song dynasties, the pearl diving industry in the South China Sea has always followed the primitive method of diving into the sea to collect pearls.

Pearl divers all go to the sea to practice water from a young age, and when they are fifteen or sixteen years old, they have to start their work, because of the danger of pearl diving, so it is generally fathers, sons, and brothers who go to sea together. One group of people with a long, thin rope tied around their waists, holding a sharpened pearling knife, and the other holding a bamboo pearling basket with a large belly and a small mouth, while the other group was in charge of answering the boat.

After the ship arrives at its destination, commonly known as the Pearl Sea, the pearl divers hold their breath and dive to the bottom of the sea to search for pearl oysters with their eyes wide open, and when they find them, they pick them up in the pearl diving basket. Some pearl oysters are attached to the reef by using highly attached foot filaments, and the pearl divers do not pick up them with their hands, so they wave the pearl diving knife to cut off the foot filaments of the pearl oysters, and then pick them into the pearl diving basket.

When they can't hold their breath or are in danger, the pearl divers shake the long rope tied to their waist and signal their companions to float on board. The boat's rope is usually carried by experienced elders, and as soon as they feel the rope swaying, they quickly pull the rope up, lift the pearl diver out of the water, and pour the pearl oyster into a clay pot filled with seawater.

The sea is full of dangers, from venomous sea snakes and jellyfish, curious and cruel sharks, to undercurrents and whirlpools that are hard to avoid. Regardless of the danger of flopping, the pearl diver could be killed. It is even possible that the object of their attack is the pearl oyster, which they pick.

There was once a story that the pearl diver shook the rope soon after diving to the bottom of the sea, and the receiver did not move, thinking that the pearl diver was stuck in the crack of the reef, and in this case, it was usually sent down to rescue another person, and when the rescuer arrived, he was shocked, and it turned out that the trapped person was caught by a giant shell like a bathtub.

No matter how much the rescuer pulls, he can't help the trapped person pull out his wrist, and it is useless to break it hard, even if he uses a pearl diving knife to cut, only a few white marks can be left. So the rescuer immediately decided to cut off the trapped man's wrist, which brought him to the surface, but because of the long drowning, the unlucky ghost had already hung up.

Since then, there have been a number of similar incidents, according to the survivors, the original giant shell in the pregnant with a huge night pearl, the pearl diver is unable to move the giant shell, but unwilling to give up the temptation in front of him, so he put his hand into the shell directly to dive the pearl, but was caught by the giant shell wrist, trapped alive. This kind of giant shellfish should be marine clams.

Although after the Ming Dynasty, there was an innovation in the way of pearl diving, that is, the boat used several zhang long iron beads to dial the pearl oysters on the bottom of the sea into the net, or the use of iron bead rakes to rake the pearl oysters into the net, although the danger was effectively reduced, but because the difficulty of manual operation was too great, and the second was that the pearl oysters were mostly hidden in the cracks of the reef, and it was difficult to be brought into the net.

High investment and low return, this method was quickly eliminated, so to this day, pearl diving is still mainly manual picking, of course, the protection of people has been improved a lot, there are professional diving equipment, and a variety of security measures.

However, the greatest danger to pearl divers does not come from the mysterious sea, but from greedy and brutal rulers. Emperors of all dynasties have forced pearl divers to risk their lives to dive pearls, and even set up a permanent institution for pearl diving in the Ming Dynasty, which not only imposed heavy taxes, but also fished the people, making the people's livelihood miserable.

Lin Zhaoke, a poet in the Ming Dynasty, wrote a poem "Pearl Diving", two of which are: the waves are blowing wildly, and the rudder is bent and the sails are broken. Wailing and crying are not heard every day, and 100,000 strong men are half alive and dead. It is a very intuitive description of the tragic fate of pearl divers.

And after several dynasties of wild mining and overfishing, now the resources of Nanzhu have been gradually exhausted. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a Hepu Taishou Meng Wei who had vigorously rectified the phenomenon of indiscriminate mining, leaving the idiom of returning the pearl to Hepu, and Meng Wei Gaojie in the preface of King Teng's Pavilion referred to this person.

Xi Bufan paused and said: "To say that our Xi family has not been involved in this industry for a long time, it was difficult to pick Nanzhu at the end of the Qing Dynasty, not to mention Nanzhu during the Republic of China, even the pearl divers were less than 100 households." ”

"If pearls are so difficult to collect, why are there so many pearls on the market now? Are they all fake?"

Xi Bufan shook his head, "Since the sixties, the artificially cultured pearl oyster technology introduced by China has been developed, and then it has soared, and now more than ninety percent of the world's freshwater pearls are exported by China, if not, haha, you have no pearls to wear." ”

The Xi family took advantage of this shareholder wind to enter the field of pearl diving, but at that time it should be called artificial pearl farming. Although it is cultured, there is still a difference between saltwater pearls and freshwater pearls.

The cultivation method of freshwater pearls is relatively simple, that is, the pearl oyster is packed in a cage and put into the river for cultivation, which is generally seedless culture, so that the pearl can be naturally bred, with the advantages of low cost and high yield, and a mother oyster can produce more than ten or twenty pieces. The disadvantages are also obvious, the pearls produced are generally small in size and irregular in shape, and most of them can only be used for pearl grinding. A small number of them are cultivated with seeds, that is, the ground shell particles are implanted into the pearl oyster, so that they are wrapped and bred into pearls, which are larger in size and have a higher cost.

The cultivation of seawater pearls, is mainly used by Japan and Nanyang and other countries, all are nuclear culture, take the most popular Nanyang white pearls, because of its large size, texture and widely favored, can give birth to the mother oyster of the South Seas white pearls for the white lipped oyster, the living environment is quite picky, whether it is water quality, water temperature or water flow will have a great impact on it.

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