With the help of Zhao Yong and other male educated youths, four or five hundred pounds of seafood were carried back to Qiao Qingqing's new house.
Qiao Qingqing was very generous, telling them to pick whatever they wanted to take home. The educated youths were too shy to take much, so she grabbed a large bucket and filled it with twenty or thirty pounds for them. Had she not considered that they couldn't possibly eat that much, she wouldn't have minded giving them even more.
The rest was sorted into several large basins. High-value catches like sea bass, turbot, and grouper were kept alive in seawater to be sold at the black market later. As for the less valuable "trash fish," some would be used for the housewarming feast, while the rest would be dried into fish jerky to be sold or bartered with the state-run restaurant and the Supply and Marketing Cooperative.
Chapter 143