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arts | Luo Xiaolan

Editing | Shazihan

edit | Mao Yijun

"You can't pick them all up. You can't pick them all up at all!"

If you come to the center of Zhaojin Town in mid-July, you might think it is a deserted town during the day, with almost all shops closed and few people on the streets. A woman with a herniated disc closed her fried skewers stand, and a couple who do business with tourists temporarily closed their restaurant. Like the bus conductors and miners who finished their night shift, they all ran up the mountain to "pick up shells."

At 4 or 5 pm, people started pouring out from all over the mountains, carrying cloth bags given by banks and supermarkets, and carrying homemade snakeskin bags with ropes across their shoulders. They rode motorcycles and drove cars for several kilometers, blocking the town. Street horns mixed with human voices. There were more than a dozen purchase points scattered at the intersections, and there were queues of two or three hundred people. The hotel was fully booked, and there were not enough beds, so people made dollies or slept on the billiard table. People slept in cars under the bridge, in tents, and even on the open space on the roadside. People who stocked up on dry food for the next day increased the income of the small supermarket four or five times.

Many locals can still describe this bustle a month later - it's like a market on the mountain, and you can hear people in the woods; they've only seen it at Xi'an Railway Station, "It's the first time in Zhaojin in all these years"... Zhao Zhongmin, the owner of a fruit stand, enjoys looking at license plates, "like scratch cards." His Yangliuping is deep in the Qiaoshan Mountains. During peak hours, he counted about 200 cars parked in the village every day. In addition to cars with the word "Shaan" starting with their names, he found that those from Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Zhejiang and other places came to pick up shells, and those from Shandong, Henan and Anhui were purchasing bosses.

●One month later, people selling shells are still surrounding the temporary purchasing point on the roadside. Photo by Luo Xiaolan

Local villagers like Zhao Zhongmin were the first to sense the change. In previous years, cicada shells only appeared after the beginning of the dog days, but this year there were surprisingly many. After June 20, when people in the mountains harvested their crops, they saw a layer of shells piled up on the ground. Zhaojin is 1,600 meters above sea level and covered with virgin forests, which is originally suitable for cicadas to survive. Mr. Tian, ​​the boss of the town's purchasing point, said that because there was no late spring cold this year, more larvae survived, resulting in a large increase in the number of shed shells.

As a medicinal material that "disperses wind-heat, relieves rashes and itching, improves eyesight and removes cataracts, and calms wind and stops spasms", the other end of the market connects pharmaceutical companies and Chinese medicine stores. Boss Tian believes that the speculation of medicinal materials after the epidemic has led to an increase in the price of cicada shells - the highest unit price was more than 200 yuan the year before last, and 320 yuan last year, but due to shortages, sometimes the price was raised to 600 yuan and could not be sold. This year, it was once sold at 410 yuan. He said that in previous years, the local area could only collect two or three tons at most, but this year his family alone collected 17 tons in more than a month.

The news spread along the mountain road. "The higher the price, the better." The locals didn't care about the specific reasons, they were all eyeing this free money-making thing. "You can't pick them all up, you can't pick them all up at all!" In July, short videos with such titles began to spread, and most of the publishers were local rural bloggers with tens of thousands of fans. In the picture, cicada shells piled up, and the background music was loud and clear.

Under a post with more than 6,000 likes, the comments section was full of people sharing the harvests of people around them. The blogger also replied, "I saw an elderly couple picking up three urea bags in one day." Jokes followed, "Currently, the hottest industry in Tongchuan is catching cicadas." The myth of getting rich quickly spread more widely. For example, a family of four picked up 240,000 yuan in less than a month, which was enough to buy a house in the town. The story was told in a very orderly manner. Several locals said they knew the family and they told it themselves. There was also news that many people earned more than 100,000 yuan, and tens of thousands was the average number. There were several kilograms of shells locked in a car, which were stolen by someone who smashed the car window.

At first, cicadas had not yet shed their shells in large numbers, so they picked up shells during the day and used flashlights to catch cicada eggs (in the local dialect, it refers to cicadas, also known as cicada monkeys) at night. A man was bitten by a snake in the forest. After leaving the hospital, he went up the mountain again on crutches and received thousands of likes on Douyin. Hearing that someone was attacked by a leopard, a local said that he took the opportunity to upload a video of the forest taken by others, accompanied by the downloaded leopard roar, and the traffic increased rapidly. It was not until July 12 that the Municipal Forestry Bureau issued a notice prohibiting the capture of cicadas, defining it as an illegal act.

After that, more people started to pick up shells, which became a new social code. A 56-year-old miner would come to pick up shells for half a day after his morning or evening shift. When there were no shells on the ground, he would climb up the tree to look for them. He sold more than 10,000 shells this summer, which was his two-month salary. In mid-July, Li Huiping drove from Tongchuan City, stopped at a place full of cars on the roadside, followed the crowd into the forest, and picked up one kilogram in an hour. He was so happy, he recalled, the unit price that day was 390 yuan, and he didn't stop, and picked up a total of 6 kilograms that day.

A few days later, he also opened a short video account, dedicated to explaining the skills of picking up shells, and named it "Brother Zhiliao". On July 20, he casually shot his first video, with the theme of self-introduction and "There are methods to pick up shells". In two hours, the number of views exceeded 30,000. He used to be a marketing account for jade, and the highest number of views for a single video was more than 1,000.

“People who live a miserable life”

It rained for several days and the mountain road was slippery. Li Huiping chose a slightly flatter roadside ditch. Insects flew everywhere in the bushes, and there were steep slopes from time to time. He slipped and fell, and accidentally bumped into a branch. The fallen leaves on the ground were yellow-brown, and the cicada shells blended in and were difficult to identify. It took him several summers to slowly summarize the rules. There were many pine and oak forests, and at first he found cicadas by listening to their sounds. His sister learned more carefully: you have to find the piece corresponding to the treetops. If you find a shell, there must be more.

Outsiders don’t understand these things, and many get lost. On the rainy day of July 24, Li Huiping met a 46-year-old Baoji fruit farmer and his four fellow villagers. After helping them into the mountains, they lost contact. It was not until 3 pm that the fruit farmer sent a message to Li Huiping, relying on the weak signal on the top of the mountain, saying that the river was getting wider the further they walked. Li Huiping realized that they had walked into the reservoir area, "I was scared to death..." After that, he never took people into the mountains again, for fear of being held responsible if something happened.

According to local public data, as of July 7, there were more than 20 rescue incidents reported to the police due to people getting lost while catching cicadas. On a social platform, a blogger said that on July 27, an elderly man in Yaozhou District went missing after picking up cicada shells. A local volunteer went to look for him on a motorcycle and fell and was hospitalized.

●Cicada shells in the woods. Photo by Luo Xiaolan

During that time, Li Huiping led more than 100 people to the mountains, all of whom were from outside Zhaojin Town, most of whom came from urban villages or suburbs in Tongchuan City, and 10% were from other cities and provinces. According to his summary, those who came were "people who had a miserable life" - when they talked, many of them could not find a job after being away for several months, and there was not much construction work in the local area this year.

Someone from Shangqiu, Henan contacted him on TikTok, saying that his family had suffered from drought and flood, and all the corn was submerged. The villagers came in batches of 40 to 50 people, who were not used to the mountainous terrain and could only pick up a pound of corn a day at most. The longest-lasting one stayed for only 3 days, which was not enough to cover the round-trip travel expenses and accommodation expenses.

A couple from Hanzhong came twice because it was raining in their hometown and their fruit shop was not doing well. The first time, they were not familiar with the mountain and did not pick up anything. The second time, they followed Li Huiping into the mountain. It had been raining for a week, so they did not care about wet clothes and colds. They said their children had to go to school and they were under a lot of pressure, so they picked up as much as they could.

When these outsiders saw the short video and rushed back, it was too late. The price dropped to about 300 yuan per catty, a drop of almost 100 yuan, and they quickly withdrew. Several people who have been picking up shells remember that the price peaked before mid-July, with the highest price being around 410 yuan. After that, the price continued to fall, and fell to a low of around 280 yuan on July 28.

No matter how much the price drops, there are still people picking up shells. On August 9, at the crossroads of the town, three men squatted and waited for a bus. The oldest man had white hair and said he was 66 years old. They were all from Baoji working outside. In the past two years, they always had no work after two days. An acquaintance introduced them to move stones here. After working for a week, they couldn't do it anymore and wanted to leave but hadn't received their wages. Following the trend, they went to pick up shells. The three men sold 30 yuan in one afternoon.

Three years ago, when Li Huiping brought his wife and children back to his hometown in Yaoqu Town near Zhaojin to start doing this, the three of them only picked up 2 taels of silver and didn't sell them. "I really want to make this money, but I can't," he said. He didn't know where to pick it up or how to pick it up, and when he asked others, they wouldn't tell him. He was very ashamed, thinking that he couldn't do business and was not as good as a farmer.

That was after the epidemic. He could not bear the pressure of store rent and online stores, and closed the jade stores in Shenzhen and Guilin one after another. He first planned to return to Xi'an to make a comeback, but after investing hundreds of thousands of yuan, the business still did not succeed. In the past few years, Li Huiping has made a living by doing odd jobs, helping friends at construction sites, and getting paid on a daily basis. He returned to the mountains and became even more frustrated. Now he comes to pick up shells in between work, driving a second-hand Wuling van, which always makes noises, has peeling paint, and is filled with debris and dust.

●Li Huiping's 8-year-old son couldn't reach the shell on the branch, so he used a tool to hook it. Photo by Luo Xiaolan

After using the traffic of Zhiliaoke on the short video platform, his account was blocked just after the number of views of one of his videos exceeded 130,000. The platform customer service replied to him that someone had complained that he had attracted outsiders and damaged the local ecological environment. After waiting for 24 hours, he immediately updated as soon as the account was unblocked, and was soon reported again. Someone who claimed to be a fan asked for his phone number, and when he answered, he said, "Don't you think you are shameless? If outsiders come, what should the locals do?"

Zhaojin Town is more than 50 kilometers away from Tongchuan City, and the mountain road is winding. Several villagers mentioned that the land on the mountain is too sticky to grow high-quality wheat, and there are few fruits. A company contracted to grow medicinal herbs, but they didn't grow leaves. There were more than 60 households in Yangliuping before, but only eight or nine households remained after they moved away. When being scolded, Li Huiping also understood what the other end of the phone meant. The locals have little livelihood, and the resettlement houses in the town are all filled with villagers who moved down from the mountains.

A restaurant owner said that after the villagers came down from the mountains, most of the men worked as security guards, earning more than 2,000 yuan a month, while the women worked as cleaners or in the hotel kitchens, earning more than 1,000 yuan. She remembered that the shell pickers crowded the restaurant at that time, but they only ordered a bowl of noodles and were reluctant to eat vegetables. The noodles were large, which affected her income.

"Carnival" exits

Villagers in Yangliuping on the mountain hoarded cicada shells, thinking that the price would rise. A 73-year-old female villager, who is thin and small, went into the mountains to pick them up every day and sold them for 7,500 yuan a month. This was her unexpected wealth - her children had to take care of their own families, and she earned pocket money by selling eggs, one yuan each, and spent it as she earned. She couldn't save it, and she couldn't remember how much she earned. Now she has 6 kilograms of shells at home. She said that when the price was the highest, someone would come to buy them.

Lao Zhao, 66, from the same village, has been collecting husks in the mountains in the summer for five or six years. He used to drive a tricycle to haul coal in a small coal mine. When he returned home after getting older, the price of corn dropped by 0.2 yuan per catty, while the price of fertilizers and seeds kept rising. He only made about 3,000 yuan from farming every year. This summer, he made 20,000 yuan by selling husks and saved more than 40 catties.

In fact, the prices are not uniform in Zhaojin Town. During the peak period, vendors cannot compete for goods, so they will deliberately raise the purchase price and then sell it to the market at a higher price. In Li Huiping's memory, the highest price of 410 yuan only lasted for a few days, and it was sold for 390 yuan per catty on July 10. After mid-July, the shell price has been fluctuating, dropping by 10 yuan every two days until the end of the month.

Li Huiping heard from friends in the industry that the local purchasing stations were all agents. At first, dozens of points were controlled by Shandong merchants, who kept lowering prices for profit. Later, Shanxi merchants also came to make money. They did not understand the market and set high prices. The competition between the two sides led to the rise of prices. 400-350-370-330-280... The price changed every day. Mr. Tian, ​​the town's purchasing agent, was also unsure. The goods he collected the day before had not been sold yet, but the purchase price in the medicinal materials market changed the next day.

Mr. Tian is in his 40s. He used to run a restaurant in Xi'an. When the town developed tourism, he came back to open a farmhouse and do freight. His wife runs a lottery shop, and he also collects local medicinal materials. Now he is also one of the agents, and most of the goods are supplied to the buyers of the Southern Pharmaceutical Factory. The other party was attracted by this shell picking carnival. They analyzed that when the price was high in the early stage, the dealers saw that they could make a profit and tried their best to buy. As a result, they bought too much and took it to the medicinal material market in Bozhou, Anhui. There was an oversupply, and the goods were unsalable, and the price fell rapidly.

The trading chain of cicada shells involves several links. According to Boss Tian, ​​the people who pick up the shells sell them to middlemen, who then sell them to buyers like him, and then hand them over to subsidiaries of pharmaceutical companies for processing and cleaning, and finally to pharmaceutical companies. Some middlemen will ship the shells to Bozhou and hand them over to local vendors. Recently, he imported several hundred kilograms of shells from Sichuan, stockpiled them, and waited for the price to rise before selling them.

●A temporary purchasing point in Zhaojin Town. Photo by Luo Xiaolan

In August, cicada shells became less and less, and the price rose a little. Several locals mentioned that the owners of some purchasing points were in a wait-and-see state because of the price increase, and they kept the goods and did not sell them. Soon when the price fell, they lost money. Boss Tian admitted that in order to avoid losing money, he would lower the price to those who came from other places to buy shells.

After the price and output fell, people from far away places and locals who had a livelihood gradually left the market, leaving behind people who had no other means of livelihood. Faced with low prices, the only way to deal with it was to see if the other party was shortchanging them. Some people weighed the goods in advance with acquaintances, and then went to temporary purchasing points to sell them. When they found that the weight they weighed was wrong, they smashed the other party's scale.

On August 9, four young men appeared on the streets of the town and set up a temporary purchasing point on the street. The scale was the most obvious sign. If they saw the goods, they would touch them a few times. If they were not wet, they would buy them. If they were too wet, they would not sell them. Most of the people selling shells were elderly people. The women wore flowered shirts and the men wore camouflage. They would shout from time to time, "If they are not wet, you can buy them for 5 yuan more."

When pouring from the bag into the boss's basket, some crumbs fell out, and he shouted again: (cicada) The legs are leaking, and someone repeatedly gave him an integer. The young man thought there were too many leaves and other debris, so he picked them out. The old man got angry and walked away, saying that he was not authentic. One side spoke Shaanxi dialect, and the other side spoke Henan dialect.

The boss of this collection point said his surname was Ma, he was 37 years old, and he had just come from Kaifeng, Henan a few days ago. He and his nephew were engaged in the recycling of copper wire, aluminum wire and other metals. This year's business was not good, and the price per ton dropped by 7,000 to 8,000 yuan. "The goods collected in the past two months have lost money. The price has dropped too much and no one is shipping." The nephew was 24 years old and graduated from a junior college. He could not find a job, and he had no academic advantage in taking the civil service exam. The other two friends were doing clothing business in their hometown town.

Four people were responsible for one point each, collecting goods in Zhaojin Town, Xiaoqiu Town and other places. Each point could collect 10 to 20 kilograms a day. Originally, they planned to sell to distributors at a price 20 yuan higher than the purchase price, but on the 10th, the volume of goods increased sharply, and they loaded a full truck and drove back to Henan overnight. The price is not good recently, and Boss Ma said that they also have to store the goods and wait until the purchase price rises to 400 yuan per kilogram before selling them.

Return to the mountains where we escaped

At the age of 50, Li Huiping has never thought about returning to the mountains. His father warned him that he would have no future if he stayed in the mountains all his life. His family was poor and he had to borrow money to go to junior high school. In order to escape the mountains and his fate of becoming a farmer, he said that he herded cattle and read books in the mountains, and his grades were among the top in the class since he was a child.

In the 1990s, he passed the entrance exam to study in a technical secondary school and returned to his hometown. The unit he was assigned to had poor performance and low wages, so he resigned and left. He worked in Tianjin, Beijing, Nanjing, and Guangzhou, doing engineering and selling purified water. He saved some money to start a jade business.

Now when he was walking on Zhaojin Street, he ran into a middle-aged man wearing glasses and leather shoes. He exchanged a few words with him: What are you doing recently? - I'm picking up shells. There was a silence, and the two of them had nothing more to say. Li Huiping found an excuse to leave.

That was his technical secondary school classmate, who was now the director of a nearby mine. Most of his technical secondary school and middle school classmates are now working in public institutions and are already mid-level leaders. Li Huiping is not tall, has a very dark tan, wears sneakers, and wears a straw hat with the brim removed when he goes into the mountains.

It is embarrassing and undignified. When talking about picking shells, many people said that this is not a serious job and those with jobs would never come. Li Huiping found that some people from the city came wearing masks, fearing that they would be discovered. After he posted a short video, his business partner in Shanghai called him in surprise, and a friend said bluntly: You are embarrassed enough to pick up shells...

●On August 10, Li Huiping went up the mountain to collect shells. Photo by Luo Xiaolan

But many people who escaped from the mountains still have to come back to make a living this summer. In early August, a shipyard employee in Jiangsu saw the short video, resigned and ran back to Zhaojin, saying that he had a monthly salary of 4,000 yuan for screwing, and there was no money left after food and accommodation. As a result, he went up the mountain with Li Huiping, but he couldn't pick up cicada shells and felt sleepy and tired.

A friend who runs a massage parlor also found Li Huiping and went into the woods wearing a white T-shirt. In the past two years, there have been more and more massage parlors and health shops on the street. He sold his shop and had no work for two months. He had to find some money to support himself. Before opening the shop, he also moved around, doing engineering and second-hand cars, but in the end he didn't save any money. Now he only picks up about 5 taels of silver a day in the mountains, which he exchanges for 165 yuan, just enough for his daughter who is in high school to enroll in a two-hour tutoring class. Some classmates who were not as good as him in the past came to laugh at him. He worked honestly, lived frugally for many years, and now has a car and a house.

Li Huiping's 41-year-old sister also came. She was wearing dirty clothes and old cloth shoes she made with patches, and went straight to the deepest ditch. She married to a rural area in the suburbs of Yaozhou, and had to sneak out to pick up shells. Li Huiping said she felt sorry for her husband and called him a bastard. When he drove her back, he had to stop at the entrance of the village. The sister didn't want others to see her, so she put the dirty clothes in a bag and put on a clean set.

She picked up the most, 1.4 kilograms a day, and sold it for 462 yuan. But she was afraid of what others would say - women are not at home to take care of children and cook for men, and her husband has also stopped her. In the eyes of this middle-aged woman, she has to come. Her mother-in-law is half paralyzed and the two children need to be taken care of. She can only do odd jobs and paint on the construction site. Her husband is a carpenter. Since this year, his work has been reduced from 20 days a month to 10 days, the same as hers. The husband has to save the money he earns. They have quarreled many times, and divorce is not realistic.

●Li Huiping's sister. Photo by Luo Xiaolan

"I'm back to square one." Li Huiping said he was tired of seeing other people's faces and went back into the mountains. He felt free, although picking shells was tiring. After his business failed, a businessman in the same community asked him to stay away and not to spread bad luck. He returned to his old job in engineering and helped his friends manage projects. He had to deal with too many people every day. As a temporary worker, he was paid 600 yuan a day, and he had to pay 100 or 200 yuan a day for the workers' meals and water. Wages were often in arrears, and his friends would get angry if he chased them too hard.

His eldest son was born to his ex-wife and is studying at a university in Xianyang. He didn’t tell him his major, but he paid for the tuition. He met his current wife while working in Guangdong. Their first child, who was less than one year old, broke his ear in a fall. The surgery cost more than one million yuan. He went back to his hometown to borrow money, but his acquaintances avoided him. In the end, he borrowed money from a bank.

By mid-August, the annual "shell picking carnival" usually ends. For several days in a row, Li Huiping took her sister and children up the mountain, but it rained and they got soaked again. On the short video platform, there are still many people picking shells in groups, and the title is still "There is no end to picking, there is no end to picking", and there are only a few dozen likes.

On the 20th, there was hail in Tongchuan. The next day, Li Huiping still went up the mountain, although the price dropped to 300 yuan in those days. He planned to pick up shells when no one was buying them. He would not pick them up next year. He wanted to become a buyer, but he had no start-up capital. He could not make a short video account, so he wanted to find someone to teach him. After searching around, everyone said that they would charge 2,000 to 3,000 yuan, and he was reluctant to do so.