[When the 996 grind gave him a bleeding ulcer, he gritted his teeth, tore up his resignation letter, and headed back to the fishing village!]
Lin Haichuan clutched the hospital diagnosis for his stomach ulcer and stood by his office tower's floor-to-ceiling windows all night.
The city's neon lights bleached his resignation letter white, but a sudden whiff of the salty sea breeze from his hometown brought back a memory: when he was twelve, his grandfather had crouched on the rocks and taught him to identify fish by the stars, saying, “The sea never deceives you. You must respect the sea.”
An old copper whistle he found at low tide became the turning point in his fate.
Within three nautical miles, the movements of fish shoals traced golden lines across his retinas. The diseases affecting sick shrimp and rotten crabs flashed red before his eyes.
His tiny fishing boat was a one-man operation, but on its maiden voyage he hauled in half a ton of wild yellow croaker. While others fought over aquaculture ponds, he could raise plump grouper with nothing more than a handful of probiotics. When a typhoon destroyed the fish hatchery, he used a tidal simulation pool to hatch the harbor's first batch of golden pompano fry.
“Lucky bastard,” the local fishing boss sneered through a ring of smoke.
Then his Haishengji refrigerated trucks jammed the docks. First came Su Yuyue, the seafood trading queen, in her Maserati to negotiate an exclusive supply deal. Then the agriculture bureau arrived with cameras to film a documentary about his sustainable aquaculture. A former blind date who had once scorned him for being poor was now crying at the village entrance. A former coworker who had stolen his project bonus knelt and begged to work with him. Even the old captain clapped him on the shoulder and sighed, “Haichuan, you really brought your grandfather's ways back to life.”
It was this sea that taught him to simmer storms into soup and raise fish into a family.
