Beach Expedition Day 2 – The Morning Fishing Frolic!

I cannot quite comprehend how my tired self managed it, but I woke up at 8 am the next day amidst a symphony of snores and the sound of waves breaking on the beach. I was not the only one awake though as I spied at least a few pairs of feet padding around outside as I peeped underneath the tent flaps. I scrambled out from my plastic cocoon, careful not to trample any of my tent buddies. I joined those outside and lounged in the sand with the other male members of our tent group. I had a decent conversation with the few souls that were conscious using a combination of my limited Chinese and sign language. We sat there just watching the world go by and waited for yet another wild expedition to commence. There were countless interesting sights to behold – a pair of horses for rent, couples both young an elderly enjoying strolls on the wet sand, Chinese dogs and their owners out for a morning prance about and large tanker ships forming a backdrop in the distance in addition to an oil rig. Along the beach, an endless army of umbrellas had been unfurled for as far as the eye could see. Their ends billowed in the luxurious sea breeze that was refreshing to both body and soul. There were large green fences of nets set up enclosing the swimming areas. As I surveyed the scene, it was apparent that the beach area on which I sat was the place to be for tent camping, there was a mosaic of tents present that featured military styles, tent antiques and modern camping tents. Further away from the water, there was a built up area which consisted of the bunkhouses, restaurants and other warehouse sized buildings of undetermined purposes.

Soon, we were invited into the women’s bunkhouse to freshen up and have a snack-sized breakfast that consisted of packaged bread and sausage. I was last in line for the showers, and unfortunately for me, the hot water had already run out by then. I couldn’t care less though. For me, the experience of being at the beach was enough. As person familiar with camping, I was grateful that I even got the opportunity to have a shower!

One word of advice for travelling in China, you will almost always be guaranteed a culturally rich and unforgettable experience wherever you go. The one thing that you may have to look past though are the facilities which can be quite different from those we are accustomed to in the west. Don’t always expect to be greeted with luxury otherwise you will be sorely disappointed. If western facilities are a must for your comfort, I would recommend that you stick with main tourist sites and not stray far from the beaten path. To truly enjoy travelling in China, a great deal of openness for this unique and rich culture is a necessity. Simply put, if you go around expecting things to be exactly as they are back home, you may find that you are getting easily frustrated and your trip may be ruined by surprisingly small and insignificant things. In short, don’t dive into travel in China with rigid expectations. Rather, be open and savour just how different things are!

After our convoy group was awake and about, it was time to set off on a fishing expedition. We boarded our dustier convoy and rolled out to a fishing area. It was a good thing that all of the vehicles were fuel efficient, none of our cars had to fill up during the entirety of the trip. When we arrived at our fishing hole, the place was already crowded and bustling with cars. As we waiting by our vehicles for a purpose unknown, I pulled out a Chinese hackeysack which one of my colleagues had generously given me the day before. We did our best to keep it up in the air, but none of us were especially talented with this feathery contraption. Soon, nothing was safe from the wrath of the falling hackeysack. It rebounded off the cars in our convey, the occasional unsuspecting head and even hit a passing motorcyclist right in the face. Fortunately for the girl who kicked it at the unfortunate victim, he just kept driving onwards, unfazed, as if nothing had happened. Our games stopped only when the now battered hackeysack fell apart – I kept the feathers for good memories though.

Soon, I found myself walking with the crowd along the concrete pier. Fishing boats puttered off into the distance, and amateur fisherpeople from various walks of life crowded the edges of the pier. The pier was composed of large concrete blocks. One had to be careful as at the center of each concrete cube, a large hole was present and was at least one meter deep. An carelessly placed foot could result in a tragic fall! Nevertheless, people still rode motorized scooters and bicycles along the pier. The crowd of people fishing were infinitely varied. There were well-dressed men in polo shorts and spotless khakis, heavily tattooed teenagers with female friends, grandparents, babies, fashionable and fashionably clueless and just about anyone under the sun was out there casting their lines out into the deep. I saw an endless variety of fishing implements as I walked along – from simple long sticks with strings attached to circular nets suspended from the ends of extendible fishing rods. Our group walked for about fifteen minutes until we stopped by a seemingly random man who showed us a sizeable collection of fish and crabs in a cooler bag. To my surprise, some of the members of our group started picking up his spare equipment and used a collection of our own as we gave fishing a try. The man didn’t seem to mind though, and he was generous both with his advice and assistance as we blundered with the alien contraptions.

Since we had walked so far out, our group were the only fisher-people in the immediate vicinity. Unfortunately, this did not improve our luck though as our attempts at fishing resulted in us emerging empty-handed save a crab or two (and a few crab-pinched fingers). I gave crab fishing a try though when a friend surrendered his net in boredom. I used a contraption which consisted of two iron rings set parallel to each other with netting in the middle section around the outside of the iron rings. A dead fish was suspended at the center and there were four openings which the crabs could easily enter would inhibit their attempts to exit. There was not much magic to this style of fishing except for lucky guesswork as to where to cast the trap and plenty of patience to wait for a crab to crawl into the net and take a few bites at the fish. There were multiple times where the members of our group almost lost our borrowed crab nets as they became lodged underneath the concrete breakwater devices. When this happened, it took a lot of jimmying and patience to get them dislodged from a potentially watery but crab-rich grave.

Soon, our fishing team dwindled in number, as people tired of fishing and headed back our cars. I stayed until the very end, casting my crab net into the deep. Soon, it was past high noon and hunger compelled us straggler fishermen to make our way back to the convoy.