The driver did not hide his envy when he heard that we were going to experience the deliciousness of the bamboo crab in Yingde. He told us that for Koreans, Yingde bamboo crab means "the best".
Eating bamboo crabs is all about the legs
After taking a bath in the sulfur hot springs and sitting cross-legged on the restaurant's Korean kang, the anticipation for the food was palpable.
Soon, the steamed crab was served. For journalists who grew up on the mainland, this crab can be big enough, the group shrinks in length can be more than a foot, and unfolded to nearly half a meter. Unlike freshwater crabs, bamboo crabs are small, but their legs are long and full. It is said that there is no paste and no yellow inside the crab body, and there is nothing to eat, while the legs have a lot of content. The shopkeeper cuts off the crab legs and puts them on a plate, and after a little bit of humility, the diners are holding scissors and a kind of small fork that plucks out the crab meat, and then wield the "Go" on the battlefield. It turns out that eating bamboo crabs do not need any "crab eight pieces", a scissors cut open the crab legs, fork gently picked, that is, there are large pieces of crab meat into the mouth. At first taste, it is quite surprising, the flavor is very fresh, the meat is also delicate, and the texture seems to be better than river crab. It was really nice to be accompanied by a light Korean soju.
The host said that the bamboo crab's legs are long and straight, much like bamboo, which is why it got its name. This kind of crab usually lives in hundreds of meters of seawater, can not be artificially bred, so what we eat are "natural" things. And only in the bitter winter, the crab meat becomes more plump, the flavor is also different from the usual, so most of the winter fishing.
Yingde County gave each person a thick book called "bamboo crab growing home", which is a bamboo crab encyclopedia. The book in the hand, can feel the weight of the bamboo crab in the hearts of the local people. The book introduces, South Korea "bamboo crab" Latin name is Chionoecetesopilio, belongs to a kind of snow crab, male crab shell width up to 15 centimeters, crab feet spread up to 80 centimeters, widely distributed in the North Pacific Ocean on both sides of the east and west coasts and the Northwest Atlantic continental shelf in the sea.
However, for Koreans who believe that "the earth is not the same as the body," bamboo crabs are widely distributed around the world, but the taste of their own is the best. The seabed of the Yingde Sea is covered with clean, fine sand, which is ideal for the growth of bamboo crabs to feed on, so Yingde bamboo crabs have the best flavor. North Korea's bamboo crabs are not flavorful enough, and Russian bamboo crabs are much less flavorful. The president of the company, Mr. Nam, also told us the secret of choosing bamboo crabs by their shells, saying that the best-looking ones are the ones that taste the best. The Korean bamboo crabs are really good-looking," he said.
The penalty for catching female crabs is $3 million
Bamboo crabs can bring in $10 million a year for the people of Yingde, and the annual catch may not be more than 40 tons.
Jung Je-hoon, an official from the Marine and Fisheries Division of Yingde County, said there are always some fishermen who do not declare their catches to the government, so the number may be a bit low. But in any case, the number is so small that, with catches from nearby Uijeongbu and Pohang, the annual catch for the entire bamboo crab-producing region is probably less than 100 tons. The Yingde people are helpless about this - this amount of production is far from enough to satisfy domestic demand, let alone export.
As early as the early twentieth century, Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula period, Yingde can still catch 3,000 tons of bamboo crabs each year. The reporter also learned from the information that the Japanese fishermen caught bamboo crabs also fell from 15,000 tons around 1970 to 3,800 tons in 2000.
Known as "Dr. Crab", President Nam told us that some Korean scholars believe that global warming, rising sea water temperature, resulting in the bamboo crab spawning, foraging and other conditions have changed a lot, thus causing the rapid decline of bamboo crab resources. Currently, Korean and Japanese scholars are actively developing large-scale artificial incubation techniques in order to replenish the increasingly scarce natural resource.
For local fisheries authorities, protecting crab resources is a serious and urgent task. The fact that we don't have female crabs on our tables is a reflection of how well the fisheries department is doing.
Zheng Jixun said that the mother crab is completely banned. Because it is really difficult to separate the fishing, the Korean fisheries department regulations, fishing boats before landing all the caught female crabs must be released into the sea. Not only that, but male crabs with a shell width of less than 9 centimeters must also be released. South Korea has also established a fishing moratorium, which only allows crab fishing from November to May each year.
These policies, which favor the long-term use of fishery resources, have been universally welcomed. In fact, fishermen in Yingde often organize themselves and encourage each other to postpone the crab fishing season for another month until December. Because in that case, the bamboo crabs store more nutrients as winter approaches, are fatter and more valuable.
Mother crabs can be sold for a very high price in private, so there are always individuals who are desperate for their own personal gain. Some fishermen often hide the crabs and sell them secretly. South Korea has strict regulations in place to deal with this. The law stipulates that if a female crab is caught illegally, a fine of 3 million won and a one-month suspension of fishing will be imposed. If the next offense, the fine rises to 5 million won, and the crab fishing license will be revoked if caught for the third time.
For this reason, the Yingdeok-gun Fisheries Management Division, together with the police, patrols the 53-kilometer-long coastline for random checks, deploying at least twice a week. Jung Je-hoon laughs, saying that the patrols are a dangerous business. Every year, they catch 20 to 30 crab fishermen who violate the law, and because of the harsh penalties, the people involved are easily agitated and anything can happen. But for the sake of more people's jobs, the patrol team has no regrets.
"Wang Tu submerged" a fresh
"Wang Tu submerged" is Yingde near the sea surface of a reef heap of the ancient name. It is said that the raging sea currents meet at Wang Thu Dive, which is rich in bait and dissolved oxygen in the water, and it has been considered a lucky place for fishermen since ancient times as a place rich in bamboo crabs and various kinds of sea fish. The last stop on our tour was "Ongdok Dive" in Seoul, where President Nam opened the "Ongdok Dive" bamboo crab restaurant. The restaurant is located next to the Gwanghwamun Gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace, the royal palace of the DPRK.
President Nam is a successful businessman who owns a large online shopping company and a wine sales company. But his greatest passion is fine dining, specializing in bamboo crab dishes.
The first restaurant, Wangchu Dive, opened in 1999 in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, and it grew to six restaurants in five years. When the first restaurant opened, there was no specialized bamboo crab restaurant in Seoul, but after the success of "Wang Duchun", more than 200 restaurants followed in a few years. In order to win the competition, Wang Tu Din has its own food research institute and has developed more than 200 kinds of bamboo crab dishes for the market. Most of these dishes are said to be modified from Hong Kong and Japanese recipes. The restaurant has been featured in many major Korean media outlets because of its specialty.
In the evening, we tried the spicy bamboo crab soup, which was delicious.
Mr. Nam, the president, asked us to introduce the restaurant to Chinese readers. He said that more and more Chinese customers are patronizing his restaurant, and that he has increasingly felt the development of China's economy and the deepening of interaction between the two countries. He told the reporter bluntly that Chinese people are now very rich. The Chinese guests who come to his place are often manually a bamboo crab, consumption is considerable.
Due to the scarcity of production, bamboo crabs in South Korea is a very expensive thing, like the Chinese hairy crabs. The reporter asked the price, a medium-sized bamboo crab to sell to 150,000 won, more than a thousand yuan, can really not cheap.