Hahahaha
The crowd on the riverbank burst into laughter.
Wudaohe Commune, as the name suggests, has five major rivers flowing through it. There is one major river flowing through the east and one through the west of Lijiapo Brigade, and the children there can swim from a young age.
Li Ping suddenly popped his head out of the water, struggling to hold up a black clam the size of a washbasin with both hands.
"I slipped on this thing," Li Ping said angrily.
This shows that Li Ping is indeed a good swimmer; otherwise, if he had suddenly slipped and fallen into the water, he would have swallowed some water and wouldn't have had time to pull the culprit out.
"This is a giant river clam!" Li Zhen took the object from Li Ping's hand, weighed it in her hand, and exclaimed, "Wow, I've never seen such a big river clam before! It must weigh over ten kilograms!"
"It must have been washed down from the upstream reservoir. Our riverbed is full of small river mussels, not even as big as a child's palm," Ning Ruoruo guessed.
Li Xiangdong sat up abruptly. "This clam is so big, could it contain a pearl?"
"Pearls?! I want to go, I want to touch river mussels too!" Li Guoqing and the others' eyes lit up when they heard the word "pearls".
Do they know that on the stage, they say that gold and silver jewelry are dazzling and precious, and pearls are very valuable!
Several people jumped into the water with a splash and reached their hands into the mud and sand at the bottom of the river to start looking for river clams.
One by one, in no time everyone had pulled out a bunch of large river clams.
"This thing is tightly closed, I can't open it!"
Zhao Xiaojun tried to pry open the clam with a wire, but after a lot of effort, it was completely ineffective; the clam shell just closed tighter and tighter.
"There are four adductor muscles at both ends of the shell. The freshwater mussel uses these adductor muscles to control its opening and closing. If you want to open it, you need to use a long knife to insert it into the gap and cut the shell muscles on both sides. Then the shell will open," Ning Ruoruo explained.
"Oh! I see!" Everyone nodded.
Li Jiabao said with a smile, "Sister Ruoruo, you know so much!"
Ning Ruoruo patted the little tuft of hair sticking up on Li Jiabao's head and said, "Study hard, and you'll know everything in the future."
"Is that muscle made from dried scallops? Dried scallops are really expensive!"
Li Xiangdong remembered that in his previous life, Zhou Yuyu liked to use dried scallops to make soup, saying that dried scallops were very nutritious and could nourish yin and kidneys, lower blood pressure, and replenish qi.
Ancient books say that even three days after eating scallops, chicken and shrimp still seem bland, which shows how exceptionally delicious scallops are.
Guo Yuxi now has a keen business sense. "Then let's collect more river mussels. We can make them into pearls to sell, and we can also open them up to sell pearls!"
The suggestion was met with approval, and the group jumped back into the river to begin their enthusiastic clam-hunting expedition.
Li Xiangdong was about to say that the scallops needed to be dried before they could be sold, and that a large river clam wouldn't yield many scallops, so they weren't worth selling.
But then I thought, it's not uncommon to see river clams as big as washbasins, so it would be nice to catch them and eat them myself. So I jumped into the river and started catching them too.
Before Zhao Sufang even entered the house, she smelled a fishy odor. When she opened the door, she was shocked to find a small mountain of river clams piled up in the yard!
"Where did you get these giant river clams? There are so many! They smell so fishy."
Li Xiangdong and the others had just finished showering and washed their wet clothes, then hung them up to dry. Seeing Zhao Sufang's surprised expression, Li Jiabao eagerly answered, "Mom, this is a good thing! My second brother said there are pearls in here, and what else? Scallops! You know pearls, right? They're very valuable!"
“Yes, Mother, once I find a big pearl, I’ll make you a real pearl necklace!” Li Ping chimed in.
Her mother had a plastic pearl necklace, but some of the pearls had lost their luster and looked terrible. If pearls could be found in a river mussel, she would make her mother a new pearl necklace. If there were any leftovers, she could make one herself and wear it to school.
"Good, good, good! My Ping'er is such a filial daughter!" Zhao Sufang said several times, smiling gently as she praised Li Ping.
Ning Ruoruo was momentarily lost in thought. Her mother had smiled at her so gently back then. She wondered why her mother, buried under the yellow earth, wouldn't come into her dreams, even if she didn't speak, just smiling at her like that would be enough!
"Second Brother, let's hurry up and open the river clams!" Li Jiabao couldn't wait any longer. He took a long knife from the cupboard and handed it to Li Xiangdong.
Li Xiangdong was also eager to try. Opening river mussels was addictive. In his previous life, he loved watching live streams of people opening mussels to extract pearls. Today, it was finally his turn.
Li Xiangdong sat down on a small stool, and Li Jiabao, Li Ping, and the others squatted around him, watching his every move without blinking.
Li Xiangdong placed the clam in the clear water and scrubbed it vigorously with a brush, cleaning away the silt and algae from the clam's shell.
He changed the water in a large basin, put the river mussels in, and some of the mussels quietly opened their mouths to change the water. Li Xiangdong was quick-witted and swift, and he thrust his sharp long knife diagonally into the mussel shell, cutting along the inner wall of the shell, starting to cut the foot, which is the adductor muscle.
"Cut this thing is quite a hassle!"
It wasn't a one-cut sever as I had imagined. Cutting the adductor muscle was a slow and laborious task. I could only use the knife to slowly stab forward, cutting the front part of the adductor muscle before cutting the back part.
"Second brother, let me do it!" Li Jiabao felt that his second brother was too slow, and he was sure he could open it much faster.
Li Xiangdong handed the knife to Li Jiabao and then used his hands to pry open the large river clam, which already had its four adductor muscles severed.
Wow! A huge handful of plump clam meat was displayed before my eyes.
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