With great difficulty, they managed to ‘endure’ it until the beginning of spring. Once spring began, it finally stopped snowing. The sun that had been gone for around two months had finally showed itself. The snow covering the mountains melted slowly. However, the occasional short burst of wind from the sea was still piercing cold. On top of the mudflat and the reef surrounding the shore, a fisherman appeared in the middle of the cold wind, shivering in the cold but he persisted on gathering seafood at the sea. 

‘Summer night, winter white’ is an authentic line of verse from what people who gather seafood say. Due to the influence of the receding tide and the change in temperature, the best time to gather seafood was during the summer nights and winter mornings. During the winter, the temperature was the most suitable for gathering oysters. The oysters were very fat in this season, and they would be able to harvest a lot. They just needed to gather oysters once, and they would be able to eat oysters for many days.

To the villagers of Dongshan Village, who had just experienced a food shortage because of winter, this was a favor from the sea. The abundance of oysters from the sea was no different than sending charcoal in snowy weather. People who came to gather seafood at the sea each brought their own wicker basket or a small bamboo basket. The basket would either be hung over the...