WUHAN, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) — At 3 a.m. every morning, the one sound Ding Yuankai can hear is the mild splash of oars slicing by a pond in Qianjiang, a metropolis in central China’s Hubei Province.
With a flashlight strapped to his wrist and clad in waterproof overalls, Ding units off in his small boat to start his every day routine. One by one, he hauls up cages wriggling with purple, armored crustaceans destined for dinner tables throughout the nation.
By the time he finishes checking all 60 mu (4 hectares) of ponds, the sky begins to pale. On the shore, seafood patrons are already ready.
“When it gets hot, crayfish burrow into the mud to avoid the sun, so the catch drops,” Ding stated. “But it doesn’t matter. Whatever I catch sells out. Qianjiang crayfish have a name. There’s never a shortage of demand.”
This yr marks his ninth season within the enterprise. Last yr, his income topped 5,000 yuan (about 701 U.S. {dollars}) per mu. And with feed prices down and yields rising, he expects this yr will likely be even higher.
In Qianjiang, this optimism runs deep. Every summer time, the little crustaceans turn into a giant enterprise and a lifestyle.
Much of Ding’s morning haul will find yourself on the China Crayfish Trading Center on the town’s outskirts. By 5 a.m., the ability is abuzz. Workers kind, weigh and pack dwell crayfish for same-day cargo to eating places and markets nationwide.
Seafood vendor Wei Xiaotao displays real-time costs on his telephone by a digital platform that tracks provide and demand throughout over 30 manufacturing bases and main client cities.
“Farmers and traders can adjust their harvesting times and volumes based on price trends,” Wei stated. “It helps us better manage risks.” By the time he spoke to Xinhua three hours after buying and selling started, he had already bought out of crayfish — greater than 500 kilograms.
Some of Qianjiang’s crayfish skip the contemporary market and head straight for processing. At native factories, they’re peeled, fried, seasoned and packaged, destined for cabinets in Europe and the United States. Others are refined into high-value elements corresponding to chitosan and chitin, that are utilized in prescription drugs, meals and cosmetics, extending the worth chain additional.
Qianjiang is now house to 48 crayfish processing enterprises, with a mixed annual dealing with capability of 800,000 tonnes.
Qianjiang City is situated on the Jianghan Plain, a serious producer of rice, cotton, fish and shrimp. With fertile land and a big community of rivers and lakes, the plain is a perfect habitat for crayfish.
The species is native to North America and was launched to east China’s Jiangsu Province by a Japanese service provider, showing within the plain within the Nineteen Eighties. Locals discovered the shellfish tasty and shortly turned them into large enterprise.
Today, Qianjiang boasts a crayfish farming space of 947,000 mu. In 2024, the town bought greater than 200,000 tonnes of dwell crayfish, producing a transaction worth of over 10 billion yuan. In the primary half of 2025, it recorded the commerce of 177,000 tonnes, and the full-year quantity is anticipated to achieve a document excessive.
To maintain progress, Qianjiang is pushing for technological innovation and year-round provide. In 2023, the Hubei provincial authorities launched a 10-point motion plan to advertise the high-quality improvement of the crayfish sector. Measures embody these associated to enhancing breeding techniques, forming knowledgeable panels and creating new varieties.
One main breakthrough got here in December 2024, when Qianjiang hosted its first winter harvest ceremony, marking a milestone in low season, large-scale crayfish advertising.
“The stable supply of crayfish during the winter and spring has improved farmers’ ability to withstand market risks and increased their overall income,” stated Guan Caizhang, who manages a neighborhood crayfish-rice built-in farming demonstration base.
Zhang Yun, director of Qianjiang’s crayfish trade promotion heart, stated that crayfish stay a pillar trade. “We will continue to scale up training, accelerate selective breeding, and expand year-round farming models to drive further development,” Zhang stated.