Volume 8 Final Chapter Chapter 1200 Giant Salamander
The so-called hot food was just some simple stewed rice, some instant vegetables, and soup made from dehydrated vegetables. The only luxury was two corn cobs stewed in the fire. The luxury was not in the food itself, but in the difficulty in finding hay for making a fire. The two of them climbed halfway up the mountain before they could barely find some.
Everything was ready, and the two sat on the moisture-proof mat and ate and chatted.
"Sir, I have a relative who wants to raise giant salamanders. He said that giant salamanders are sold for 2,000 yuan per kilogram, and he can make tens of thousands of yuan from one."
"Does your relative have some wealth?" Nan Yi said as he handed a half-eaten pickled goose egg to Miao Xiaolan and took the cut sausage from her.
"He didn't have much money. He came to me to borrow money, saying that it would cost a lot to raise giant salamanders."
"I see. Have your relatives ever engaged in breeding?"
"No, he only ran a brick factory, which was prosperous for a few years, but then the kiln collapsed and killed three people, and he lost all the money he had earned."
Nan Yi hesitated for a moment and said, "Then you'll have some trouble. The investment in breeding giant salamanders is a bit high. One fry costs nearly one thousand yuan. The breeding location is particular. You need to find a dark place with running water. The water quality must be good enough. If the water quality is poor, a lot of medicine will be used.
Let me put it this way, it takes at least three years to raise a giant salamander to a weight of three or four kilograms, suitable for market. Adding up all the various costs, plus the money for building a breeding base, the cost of raising a single fish is probably more than two thousand yuan. The cost can be reduced a little by raising more, but then the investment will be even greater.
According to the current market price, if you can feed them well, you will definitely make money, and it will be a huge profit. It won’t be too difficult to make millions a year on average, but…”
"?"
Miao Xiaolan is waiting for Nan Yi's turning point.
"I know a lot about giant salamanders. I not only know the techniques of breeding and raising them, but also the changes in the market. The Reclamation Group started raising them in 1985. At that time, they were sold for 300 yuan per kilogram in the market. Because few people raised them, they had to be caught in the mountains.
By 1988, because the giant salamander was almost driven to extinction due to excessive hunting, the state listed it as a second-class protected animal. The more it is protected, the more valuable it becomes. By the end of the year, the price of the giant salamander soared to thousands of dollars.
From that year until 1995, the Reclamation Group controlled the shipment volume and shipping channels of giant salamanders, and only sold limited giant salamanders to a few fixed buyers. The buyers would secretly take the goods to the black market and sell them as wild ones. The shipment volume was well controlled, not only was the price at its highest point at 3,000 yuan per kilogram, but there was no shortage of sales. If restaurants wanted to place an order, they had to pay a deposit in advance and use connections, otherwise they would not sell to them.
Nan Yi ate a little and continued, "After 1995, the market was not so good. In 1991 and 1992, some people had already set their sights on the breeding of giant salamanders, and the giant salamanders they raised were marketed in 1996. It was also from that year that people stopped caring about the difference between breeding and wild ones. The reclamation group no longer controlled the channels, but only controlled the number of fish marketed each year.
Although giant salamander farming brings tens of millions of net profits to the reclamation group every year, this project is not taken seriously within the group and has always been in a state of being cut off at any time. In July last year, it was decided to cut this project after the last batch of stocked fish were sold in the second half of 2009, leaving only the fry project.
Moreover, I want to tell you that the seedling project can be sold at any time, as long as there is a buyer willing to pay a high price, the technology and the seedling base will be sold together. "
“Will the price of giant salamanders fall at any time?”
"Yes." Nan Yi nodded affirmatively. "Before, the price of giant salamander fry was high because of the high cost of raising them. Now the technology has broken through and the cost has been reduced to an extremely low level, but it is kept secret. Moreover, the new generation of fry has been improved and is not as demanding on the breeding environment as before. It is also easier to raise them, and the breeding cost has been reduced invisibly.
Just last month, the "Financial News" column of the Agriculture Channel aired an episode about a guy who raised giant salamanders and had many twists and turns. It seemed that the guy was a real estate owner from Guizhou Province. He originally raised turtles. In 1996 and 1997, turtles could be sold for two to three hundred yuan per kilogram. He caught the good times and made more than 10 million yuan in three years.
Now such a big boss is raising giant salamanders again. The program also said that a Japanese company contacted him several times two years ago to buy his giant salamanders and promised to sell 300,000 kilograms of them every year.
Nan Yi knocked on the rice spoon in his hand and said indignantly: "This is simply nonsense. If Japan could sell 300 tons a year, the Reclamation Group would have rushed over long ago. How could he get such a good thing?
He is just a guy selling seedlings. I don't know how much money he spent to get on the show. It's purely an advertisement. If there are people like this, they will only raise two more batches of giant salamanders at most. By 2013, the price of giant salamanders will plummet.
This will get you into the trap. You can taste the sweetness of the first batch, and when the second batch comes, you will definitely become crazy and spend money to expand the scale, thinking of making a lot of money. Fortunately, there will definitely be more than one or two people who have such ideas, and by then a large number of giant salamanders will be put on the market. "
Nan Yi made an explosion gesture with his hand, "This is why I said you are in trouble. If you don't lend it to me, it would be unkind and your relatives might become estranged. If you lend it to me, your relatives might lose everything and might not be able to pay you back."
"Sir, will the price of giant salamanders definitely collapse?"
"Yes, the reason why the giant salamander was sold at such a high price was not because of its own value, but because some people hoped that it would be valuable. The host needed an expensive and rare food to entertain the guests, so the price of this thing was pushed up by the buyers.
When the number of breeding increases, the mysterious veil is lifted, and the special value that is deliberately created no longer exists. "Nan Yi asked with a smile, "You have also eaten giant salamanders, what do you think it tastes like?"
Miao Xiaolan thought about it and said, "It tastes similar to catfish, nothing special."
"Haha, that's it. Giant salamanders are not tasty, and their medicinal value is just so-so. They can only be regarded as a very common traditional Chinese medicine. Coupled with the various drugs used in artificial breeding, giant salamanders have become medicine jars. Not to mention their medicinal value, toxins accumulate in their bodies after using the drugs. It's just luck whether you get sick ."
"I need to think carefully about whether to lend you the money or not." Miao Xiaolan frowned.
"Um."
Nan Yi responded and turned his attention to eating.
After sleeping all night wrapped in sleeping bags, the two arrived at the top of a hill near Yipiandian Village in the afternoon of the next day. Looking down, they saw patches of earth-gray color. The green was like the beef in a famous chain of beef ramen, which was not only few but also thin. There was probably less than one tree per person, and they all looked wilted, without any of the lushness of early summer.
The layout of the village conforms to the typical characteristics of the arid mountainous areas in the north. Farmers live near the fields and the houses are relatively scattered. The construction of the village has not undergone overall planning and it is difficult to tell what the details are. Most of the houses are built with local elm, poplar, pine and other woods and adobe. The houses are short and narrow, mostly earthen houses, and have no tiles on the roofs.
Among them, the better manor houses have rammed earth walls that are more than a foot higher than those in the Sichuan area. A corner tower is built on the side of the manor near the gate. Other houses are high. Nan Yi has read information about this before. This kind of house is called a high house. Generally, there are windows on three sides, and two windows on both sides outside the courtyard. They are used to listen to movements inside and outside, observe visitors, and guard against thieves. They are the ears and eyes of the courtyard.
The houses in the courtyard are of single-eaved, hanging rafter or rolling rafter type. Most families use three-beam and two-hanging rafters. The main house of those who are well-off uses a flat-braced steep frame to support three purlins, which has a more reliable structure.
I didn’t see any cave dwellings for people to live in. I only saw a few small caves on the cliffs where livestock, poultry, or firewood were kept…
After looking for a long time, Nan Yi took in the whole scene in the village. He did not rush into the village. He ate something on the mountain and then rushed to the front and back of the village.
He went to the fields to take a look at the lifeless potatoes, found the legendary spring and tasted the bitter water that it had drawn, went to the hilltop where graves were lined up to look at the tombstones, and roughly judged the health of the villagers by the birth and death years shown on them.
When it was about to get dark, Nan Yi climbed up again and connected with Pei Shuyi. He told him about the trends of the mountains and rivers he had seen, expecting him to give him an answer about the suspicion of a large tomb.
Pei Shuyi’s answer was that the area was poor and had bad water and extremely bad feng shui.
Having given up the idea of using the big tomb to hype up a shop into a scenic spot, Nan Yi asked again about the direction of the water dragon.
Pei Shuyi did not dare to make a rash judgment as he had not seen it in person, so he just gave a rough guess.
Having a general idea is enough. Nan Yi has already outlined a rough framework in his mind on how to implement his small village economy in Yipiandian - if you want to survive, you must first have water. Trees and fast-growing shrubs must be planted on every hill within sight. Green plants can consolidate the soil and store water. If you want to get rich, you must first build roads, a 37-kilometer-long two-lane cement road.
Standing on the top of the mountain, Nan Yi was silently calculating, with the abacus in his mind clattering away with various calculations.
After a long time, with a rough idea in his mind, Nan Yi took Miao Xiaolan down the mountain and went straight to the best courtyard in the village that he had chosen before.
Unexpectedly, the village secretary did not live in this courtyard. With the help of the landlord, Nan Yi met Ma Hailong, a senior village official who ran a shop in front of the third best courtyard in the village. Ma Hailong was about thirty-five or thirty-six years old, with obvious characteristics of a person living in a water-scarce area - his skin was dark due to accumulation of mud and dirt, his clothes were dull, and his hems and trouser legs were covered with stains and dust of varying depths.
After quickly coming to the conclusion that he was lucky enough to come across someone who could probably do something practical, Nan Yi formally introduced himself to the other party, "Secretary Ma, hello, I am Nan Yi from Beijing University."
"Hello, Professor Nan. I've been looking forward to seeing you. Please come in."
Ma Hailong attentively pulled Nan Yi into the house, pushed him onto the kang, asked the wife to bring some dried fruits for the guests, and sent her to boil water. He sat at the table across the kang, staring at Nan Yi with fiery eyes, as if he was staring at a gold ingot.
In Ma Hailong's eyes, Nan Yi was a gold ingot. He had been informed before that a professor from Peking University was coming, not to eat, but to help the poor with a lot of money. If you treat him well, he will be happy and the money will stay in the store.
