Tian Kaihong Cuts Open a Strange Fish's Belly and Pulls Out Black Gold

The bigger the fish Tian Kaihong raises, the more valuable it is - a single one can sell for over 10,000 yuan on the market. The reason he won't sell a single fish even for 100,000 yuan is that by chance, he discovered a big secret: you can pull over a million yuan out of one fish's belly. Watch how Tian Kaihong of Changyang Tujia Autonomous County, Hubei, pulls black gold out of the belly of a giant strange fish!

Tian Kaihong: Ah, good mountains and good water raise good fish.

This river is called the Qingjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, famous for its rich aquatic products.

Today, right by this river, Tian Kaihong, head of a fish farming base, is going to move the fish he raises to a new home.

The fish Tian Kaihong raises is no ordinary fish. The moment it broke the water's surface, it startled a boatload of tourists passing by.

Tourist: Wow.

Tourist: Wow, so big.

Tourist: It's huge. It scared me half to death just looking at it.

What kind of big fish could be so terrifying? Through an underwater camera we can see this big fish has a pointed head, a wide-open mouth, and a vertical tail fin, looking especially like a fierce shark.

Tian Kaihong says this big fish has been growing for 10 years, and each one weighs over two hundred jin. Today, he is going to move these big fellows to a new home.

This big fish is not only scary-looking, it can also hurt people. So the people brought in to move them are all very experienced master workers.

This master has been moving fish for ten years, and his technique is very skilled.

Worker: You have to turn this fish over, let it hold a mouthful of water, and it calms down.

But even for such an experienced master worker, accidents are impossible to guard against when moving fish.

Reporter: What happened to your hand?

Worker: When I just grabbed the fish, its scales and armor are quite sharp.

This fish has five raised ridge lines on its body, and the raised places are what the master calls the fish's scale armor. When the fish's tail sweeps forward, the sharp scale armor scrapes the master's arm and cuts it.

That's not even the worst of it. The tail is the most powerful part of this fish's whole body. If you're hit directly by the fish's tail, the consequences are quite serious.

Master: If it swings over and hits you in the face - because our faces have been hit before. At the time it was red, and the next day it was all black, all bruised.

The fish-moving master also told the reporter that if the fish's tail whips your leg, it can break the bone.

This fish's tail is so powerful because in the wild, it relies on its powerful tail to drive its several-hundred-jin body, swimming thousands of kilometers from the sea up into rivers to spawn. This fish with such extraordinary endurance is the sturgeon.

Today, Tian Kaihong plans to transport more than 30 big sturgeon to the base. Tian Kaihong says this big fish is his treasure for making big money. Moving such expensive fish of course requires great care, but the key still has to do with this fish's body structure.

Even though this sturgeon is big and its tail is strong, its body is actually very fragile. It has no bone spurs for support throughout its body, just five rows of bony plates slightly harder than cartilage, and it's very hard for it to withstand a strong impact.

Tian Kaihong specially prepared stretchers, and carried them one by one like wounded patients on stretchers into the fish tank truck.

This batch of fish being moved today is not ordinary sturgeon from the net cages - they are all pregnant female fish. Today they are moving to the base's fish ponds to await spawning.

Tian Kaihong: Everyone follow orders as one. Today our sturgeon are moving house, moving into the compound to live.

After the sturgeon move, what they move into is this kind of high-end compound with dedicated caretakers.

Tian Kaihong: If this fish were to go on the dining table.

Reporter: If it's sold for meat, right?

Tian Kaihong: Sold for meat it's about 10,000, should sell for around 12,000 yuan, but right now even if you offered 100,000 I wouldn't sell.

Reporter: Even if I offer 100,000 yuan you won't sell?

Tian Kaihong: Right, I won't sell.

Selling one fish for 100,000 yuan is already stunning, but Tian Kaihong's wealth secret goes far beyond this. By a chance opportunity, Tian Kaihong discovered that hidden in this fish's belly is a kind of black gold with a market value of nearly a million yuan. This black gold drew Tian Kaihong to transform from a big fish farmer with annual sales of over 60 million yuan into a professional gold digger. What kind of wealth mystery is hidden in this?

Tian Kaihong started his business at the age of 29. He has grown vegetables, raised fish, and struggled for many years, but even past forty he still hadn't made any money.

In 2009, at the age of 43, Tian Kaihong fell seriously ill again. One afternoon, Tian Kaihong suddenly felt dizzy with numb limbs. A check at the hospital, and the doctor said his cerebellar pituitary had drooped into his cervical spine, and he needed craniotomy immediately.

Tian Kaihong: I might become a vegetative person, because the whole cranium had to be opened. I might also end up hemiplegic if the surgery didn't go smoothly, unable to leave the operating table.

The surgery was very successful, and Tian Kaihong felt very lucky to have gotten his life back. After the surgery, Tian Kaihong went to Qingdao to relax, and attended a seafood trade fair.

At the seafood trade fair, Tian Kaihong discovered a company that also raised fish in the Qingjiang River. This company was only about a dozen kilometers away from Tian Kaihong's company, yet its annual sales had already exceeded 100 million yuan, all thanks to this sturgeon.

The sturgeon is the largest-bodied fish in the Yangtze River. After reaching adulthood, a sturgeon generally can reach a weight of over 200 jin. The largest can grow to over four meters long and over a thousand jin in weight, with a lifespan of up to a hundred years. In the Yangtze River basin, everyone calls the sturgeon the “King of Yangtze Fish.”

This sturgeon has already been raised for 7 years, and Tian Kaihong specially shows the reporter just how long it is.

Tian Kaihong: Stretch it out on this side, measure how long it is.

Reporter: How long is it?

Tian Kaihong: Two meters eighteen something, 2 meters 2. Slow down, slow down, let's see how thick it is. 1 meter 1, this isn't even the thickest part, 1 meter 1, chest circumference 1 meter 1.