In September 1997, Zhang Jiangke was laid off and diverted. He became a soldier at the age of 18, transferred to work in the county phosphate chemical factory at the age of 24, and now at the age of 46, he became the first batch of laid-off workers in the factory because of the restructuring of the enterprise.

Zhang Jiangke couldn't understand how he became a fashionable laid-off worker, who had worked hard and hard for more than 20 years, and had been rated as a model worker in the factory many times.

With the 47,000 yuan soft sister paper that bought out the seniority, Zhang Jiangke, who was laid off in middle age, was at a loss and had nothing to do. After wandering around the city for a while, he still didn't know what to do next and what he could do? He didn't want to continue to stay in the county town to see the people, so he returned to the fishing village where he grew up and returned to the countryside where he was born and raised.

He no longer has a rural hukou, and he really doesn't want to stay in the village all day, and when he sees his neighbors, he has to keep explaining why he doesn't go to work in the factory and why he has been at home on vacation recently. I was really speechless, so I explained that I was retired. also made up a plausible explanation - he was engaged in a special type of work and could retire early.

Retirement is about to have a retirement look, so he rode his bicycle every morning to the old Hezui River stalk of Xingyun Lake, and set up two fishing rods to fish. Here, it is often a day of mixing, living a retirement life like an idle cloud and a wild crane in the eyes of others.

In fact, there is no way to say that Zhang Jiangke has bitterness. In the county phosphate chemical factory, he is engaged in feeding, playing physical strength, fighting seriously and responsibly, and it is indeed a special type of work with no technical content at all. However, this kind of special type of hard work is not those special types of work stipulated by the state, and there is no preferential treatment for early retirement. Now that he is middle-aged and laid off, he can't find any suitable work in the city, and it's not bad to be a professional fisherman by the lake.

I grew up in a lakeside fishing village, and my fishing skills are passable. Especially when he was a worker in those years, he held an iron rice bowl in his hand, and when he came home from rest, he also took fishing by the lake as a rest, entertainment and pastime. Every time I come to the lake to fish, I always catch some fish. Not only can their families eat wild lake fish regularly, but occasionally they can catch more fish with good luck, and they can also sell some surplus wild lake fish to the city people and fishmongers who come to the lake to try their luck and look for wild lake fish.

The fishing moratorium is now implemented in the lake area, and the time for which fishing boats can be used to legally pull nets to fish in the lake is only more than half a month every year, that is, from December 25 to January 10 of the following year, and the rest of the time is a moratorium. In other words, at other times, anglers on the lake's shore with a fishing license are the legal catchers of authentic wild lake fish. During the fishing moratorium, they can only legally serve authentic wild lake fish if they want to eat it. The wild lake fish offered by others are either caught secretly or deceitfully.

Xingyun Lake is only a shallow lake on the plateau, and if the fishing moratorium is not implemented, there will be no fish in the lake for a long time. The fishing moratorium is not new, as early as ancient times, there was a customary fish festival. Trawling is only possible for three months a year, and fishing is still suspended for the rest of the year. Modern fishing tools are becoming more and more advanced, and fishing methods are becoming more and more diverse. In order to protect the fish resources in the lake and for sustainable development, the lake has been closed for longer and longer fishing closures. The fishermen by the lake understand that they have to enforce it, and they don't understand it. The emergence of anglers has made up for the contradiction between fishermen and fishery administration, and has also given birth to a group of high-level professional anglers.

Zhang Jiangke knows that now is not like when he was a child, he can fish freely by the lake, and he must apply for a fishing license. He fishes here, and can use up to two fishing rods for a fishing license, and needs to pay 1,200 yuan a year to apply for a fishing license. The license fee of 1,200 yuan, which is not a pressure for the previous Zhangjiang customers, is only a vacation every year to come fishing, and he harvests more than two or three thousand yuan of fish to sell, which is worth the fare.

However, since he was laid off and returned to the fishing village, his good fortune seems to have run out. Many times, he spent a whole day by the lake, and the fish he harvested was not enough to satisfy his own hunger, and his desire to sell the fish for an income was not fulfilled for a long time. Is it a different state of mind, or is there no fish in the lake? Lao Zhang was depressed.

Anyway, if you have nothing to do and stay at home, this fish still has to be caught, otherwise this fishing license will be wasted. According to this unlucky luck, maybe I will be reluctant to spend any more money on a fishing license next year. Next year, I won't even be able to catch fish, so what should I do?

The sun has risen high, the fog on the lake is gradually dissipating, and Zhang Jiangke, dressed in overalls, sits on the pony on the shore.

In November, the weather is getting colder, and Lao Zhang's luck today is even worse. After two or three hours of fishing, he didn't catch anything, and the basket was still empty. In the past, no matter how bad my luck was, I could finally have a few crucian carp and small white fish on the bait, and I could make a snack when I went back.

Zhang Jiangke turned his head slightly, looked at the fishing village looming in the distance on the lake, sighed slightly, and said to himself: "If this person is unlucky, he will stuff his teeth when he drinks cold water." The job is gone, why can't I even catch fish, and what face continues to ?...... in the village"

Retract the rod, and the sticky bait on the hook is already soaked. The bait had never been bitten by a fish at all, and this luck was enough. Zhang Jiangke sighed, and was about to change the bait, when the laughter of young men and women came from the path behind him, which made him very depressed. The fishing site he chose was located at the end of a river at the mouth of the old river, and the path behind him was more like a road than a high ridge.

The ridges cut off the lake from the ponds in their village, which are the few paddy fields under their village's management. After the production was delivered to the households, the villagers simply turned the paddy fields into ponds, and instead of planting deep rice grains, which could not guarantee the yield, they switched to raising fish.

The pond behind him was a shallow pond that belonged to the responsibility of the brothers of their family. Strictly speaking, these paddy fields and ponds were once part of Xingyun Lake, which belonged to the lakeside wetland and were the product of land reclamation from the sea in those years.

The narrow ridge is not a good road, and few people usually come, and even the fishery officials who drove a boat to check the fishing license saw him from a distance. It's all an old acquaintance, so there's no need to check. He fished here rain or shine, rain or shine, and even guarded his own fish pond by the way. Someone is here today, who came here to disturb his peace?

Lao Zhang, who was not in a good mood, turned his head to look and saw four young people walking along the lakeside path, talking and laughing. The one at the front is his eldest son Zhang Wenhu, and the other one is dressed fashionably, one man and two women, and the male one is actually Qi Jingtao, the son of his old brother Qi Zhengming. In 1994, the father and son also came to their house to participate in the fish festival, and Lao Zhang was very impressed by this college student nephew, who was more promising than his own two boys.

Qi Zhengming and him had a lifelong friendship. When he was a soldier, he was stationed in Baoshan, supported local construction, and almost got gas poisoned when he participated in flue-cured tobacco baking in the new tobacco area. It was Qi Zhengming, who was engaged in flue-cured tobacco technical guidance in Baoshan at that time, who found out in time and risked his life to drag him out of the flue-cured tobacco room. They are all fellow villagers in central Yunnan, and it was fate to meet in a foreign land, and there is such a scene, the two have become brothers even if they are not brothers. Later, he was discharged from the army and returned home to be arranged to work as a worker in the county, but Qi Zhengming had to take care of the family because of the death of his old father, and returned to his hometown to continue farming. Although the two families are not in the same county, they have always maintained a brotherly friendship and have always had contacts.

Before he was laid off, he received a letter from Qi Zhengming, saying that he had contracted to operate the granary river orchard in the past year, and asked him to have time to live in central Yunnan for a few days. Lao Zhang was worried about work at that time, and did not go to Yunnan to visit Qi Zhengming as in previous years, but just sent a letter to invite Qi Zhengming to come to his house to participate in this year's Open Fish Festival.

Although he worked in the county seat after becoming a soldier, his old father and three brothers, as well as his wife and two sons in the countryside, all lived in a fishing village, and these relatives in his hometown still mainly made a living from fishing.