Chapter 10 Hometown of Ayu

There is a famous dish in Japanese restaurants in Taipei called "grilled sweetfish". This grilled fish is different from other fish; other fish need to be cut open to remove the belly, but sweetfish is whole and can be eaten together. Eat it with the stomach, and the stomach of sweetfish is bitter, so bitter that it has a sweet taste, just like drinking good tea. Once we ate sweetfish in a Japanese restaurant, a friend told me the secret of why sweetfish can be eaten with the stomach.He said: "Ayu is a strange fish. It loves cleanliness more than any other fish. As long as the waters where it lives are slightly polluted, the ayu will die, so there will never be any dirty things in its stomach. Eat with confidence.” My friend’s words have greatly improved my taste for sweetfish, what kind of fish is it, with such a noble mood, that it can’t tolerate a little bit of environmental pollution?This also reminds me that ten years ago, in a small restaurant at the head of the Bitan Bridge beside the Xindian River, I once ate the sweetfish that was abundant in the Xindian River. The sweetfish in the river has been extinct for a long time, because the Xindian River has been polluted by people, and the sweetfish refuse to survive in such waters.

Now the ayu in Japanese restaurants is no longer produced in Xindianxi, but has to be airlifted from Japan to Taiwan, which greatly increases the value of ayu, almost any fish can't match it.I heard that sweetfish can still be found in some unpolluted sea areas of Penghu, but there are very few of them, and it has long been unable to supply the needs of diners.It is sad to think that the ordinary food that used to be by the Xindian River can no longer find its hometown in Taiwan. Every time I eat sweetfish, my heart feels heavy. That kind of heavyness comes from the sensitivity of sweetfish. In the eyes of many people, all fish have no other meaning except as food.Ayu is different, because it loves cleanliness, which makes us feel that we should have a clean living space.On a certain level, sweetfish is more expensive than human beings. We live in a polluted environment, full of harsh noises and black smoke from cars, but after a long time, we have adapted to this environment. Not even a plea.

Without fresh air, clean streams, clear skies, or even quiet hearing, we are already oblivious to it. Facing the sinking living space day by day, sometimes we completely lose our vigilance. Otherwise, sweetfish is not willing to be content with the dirty stream, and is not willing to change itself to adapt to a worse environment, so it chooses to die, die clean, and live without turbidity. Ayu lingered incessantly. I remember that many years ago, I was on Lishan and visited the breeding of squat fish; squat fish is an endangered fish. In Taiwan, only the clear stream and moderate water temperature on Lishan can make them happy to swim, because of their unique Character, so that the breeders dare not take it lightly, and because of this, trout will never be compared with tilapia in people's minds.

Once I was vacationing at the seaside of Penghu, and the fishermen invited me to the seaside to enjoy the wonderful scenery.That day, many dolphins swam to the shore for no reason and collectively committed suicide. I stood on the shore and watched the dolphins lined up everywhere. They jumped from the sea to the shore and waited to die, but no one knew the reason, and neither did I. The collective suicide of dolphins brought a small fortune to the local fishermen. No one asked why they refused to survive, but my heart was full of doubts; dolphins are animals with high IQ, why do they commit collective suicide?

Did you feel wronged?In the past when the sea was clean, did dolphins commit suicide?Biologists may not be able to solve the mystery of dolphin suicide, but I know that dolphin suicide is not "for no reason", there must be a reason for it, but unfortunately, we cannot understand it.The only thing that is understandable is that animals have animal thoughts, and fish also have fish moods.A clean sea is the hometown of dolphins; a clear stream is the hometown of sweetfish and squid; they would rather be lost souls than live in dirty waters. As human beings, we should reflect deeply .

Many friends who raise birds and tropical fish often complain to me that no matter how carefully they take care of them, the birds and fish will die for no reason. I think that the death of fish and birds is not for no reason, because birds belong to the forest, not to the forest. Cages; fish belong to rivers and seas, not water tanks.What's more serious now is that even in the mountains, forests, rivers and seas, many animals are unhappy due to man-made pollution. I am afraid that in nature, there is only one animal that can calm down to a bad environment. The name of that animal is "" people".

A few years ago, people "released sweetfish" in Xindian River to let the sweetfish return to its hometown. It is said that there are very few sweetfish surviving in Xindian River. If the river does not continue to be polluted, the sweetfish we eat in the future It doesn't have to come from the sky, but a native product of the hometown. Ayu is ours, and our hometown is also ours. We must not let our hometown become a place that Xiangyu refuses. —December 29, 1982