Located at the northern foothills of the Himalayas, with an average altitude of more than 4,700 meters, at the junction of Gangba County and Dingjie County, there is a large freshwater lake. This freshwater lake is connected to several small rivers. When the rainy season comes, the river water fills up, and the lake

The fish in them will swim upstream and pour into the river in dense numbers. When the dry season comes, the river will stop flowing, and a large number of fish will live in the deep water.

This fish has a black back and a white belly, has no scales or little phosphorus, and looks slightly like the pollack from the Yalu River estuary. Although it takes a little longer to cook and the fish's meat will "fly", its meat is fresh and tender, making it a delicacy on people's dining tables.

It is a pity that Tibetan compatriots do not have the habit of eating fish, so the fish and meat resources are wasted.

In the mid-to-late 1960s, the democratic reform in Gangba County was basically completed, and the pilot work of establishing a mutual aid group had just begun. Not long after I was transferred, I was added to the working group, and I went to the ranch with everyone to start a new work.

The working group's discipline is very strict, and it must implement the "Three Samenesses" with the herdsmen, that is, eat together, live together, and discuss together.

Although the Tibetan and Han people have very different habits, they can accommodate and respect each other. We eat raw mutton and hand-caught tsampa with the herdsmen, and the herdsmen also eat what we bring.

There are a lot of fish in the resident area, and we sometimes catch them and cook them to improve our lives. Although the herdsmen and Tibetan comrades in the working group do not eat them, they do not object to our eating them. Whenever we eat fish, some people often gather around to watch.

Just like appreciating aliens, I feel weird about people eating fish.

When we serve some fish and sincerely ask them to taste it, they will run away while laughing.

Tibetan compatriots do not eat fish, which is related to their beliefs.

Since Buddhism was introduced to Tibet, it has had a profound influence on the entire nation.

In their view, Buddha is everything, and they must obey the Buddha's arrangements while they are alive. Only after death can they ascend to heaven.

They don't eat fish because fish is the representative of heaven in the mortal world and the incarnation of God. Therefore, fish is a sacred fish and cannot be eaten.

After the death of local Tibetans, they are usually buried in the form of sky burial, and water burial is one of the auxiliary methods.

Water burial means throwing the corpse into the river near the village to feed the sacred fish. After the sacred fish eats the corpse, it can take the deceased to heaven. In the next life, the deceased can live a life of abundant food and happiness as a Fengyi tribe.

However, with the passage of time, this "teaching" color gradually faded, and then evolved into folk customs that continue to this day.

At that time, catching fish was the simplest and most joyful thing.

There are many ways to catch fish, the most common is fishing.

Although we don’t have the usual fishing equipment, we only need to burn the needle red with a wax flame, bend it into a hook shape and tie it with a string, and then connect the string to a small wooden stick. A small stone tied above the fishhook can replace the fish sinker.

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You don’t even need to bring bait when fishing. You just need to catch a small fish by the river [which is easy to catch] and dig out a small piece of meat with a knife to use as bait.

Although the conditions are simple, the amount of fish caught each time is astonishing. We can only catch 10 to 20 kilograms in an hour. Sometimes we catch too many fish, so we dig a small pond by the river and raise the fish. However,

The next time we came to fetch fish, all the fish in the pond were gone. Later we found that all the fish had been taken away by eagles and crows.

Another way to catch fish is even simpler. Just catch it with your hands. Although this method is simple, it is particularly effective.

Once, the regional public security department sent an emergency notice saying that three people in Xixin County were trying to escape from the Pigeon Cave Ranch in Gangba County and asked our county to send people to intercept them.

Because I often go to the countryside and am familiar with the roads, the county ordered me to lead the way and cooperate with three People's Liberation Army soldiers from the county public security squadron to perform interception tasks.

After completing the mission, we rested by a small river that was almost drying up. We found that there were so many fish in the river. A soldier fired a shot into the water, and seven fish suddenly floated up.

Everyone was very excited, so they rolled up their trousers, took off their shirts, and went down to the river to grab it. It didn’t take long for us to grab five to six hundred kilograms. We didn’t leave until the jeep could no longer hold it.

Another simplest and most effective way is to poke with a shovel.

Whenever the dry season goes to the countryside of Zhike, which produces the most fish, the working team first sends a person to the river to catch fish. This person puts on a shovel and stands by the river. He pokes the fish that he likes and pokes enough.

Clean it, take it back to the station and put it in the pot right away.

In the 1950s, the saying "beat the fox with a stick and scoop out the fish with a gourd" was popular in my hometown in Northeast China, but it was truly understood in Gangba County that year.

Later, due to the spread of atheism and the influence of the Han people, the views of many Tibetan compatriots also changed greatly.

In particular, young Tibetans who have returned from further studies in the mainland, Tibetans in government agencies, and grassroots Tibetan cadres have undergone the greatest changes. Many people have also begun to eat fish.

There was a young herdsman named Wangju in Zhike Township. He was a part-time animal guard in the township. He accepted new ideas very quickly. One day, he drove seventeen donkeys to the county government canteen to sell fish. Each donkey carried two

A bag of fresh fish weighed a thousand or several hundred kilograms a day. Although he sold the fish at the price of cow dung at that time, his courage directly reflected the great ideological progress of the local people.

Today, it has been thirty years since I left that magical place. Gangba County will surely undergo earth-shaking changes like our great motherland.

However, I don’t know whether the status of the sacred fish has completely collapsed, or whether a modern fish canning processing factory has stood beside the lake.