After the dream of getting rich overnight fades, where does the road to wealth through agriculture lead?

This is Daisong Island in Zhangpu County, Fujian Province. Every year from September to February of the following year is the golden time for the fishermen of Daisong Island to catch swimming crabs.

This young man is Yang Huashan. Today he is going out to sea with the fishermen just to see how the batch of swimming crabs he plans to buy over the next couple of days is doing.

The fishermen on the island are all highly experienced and have their own methods for judging where crabs are plentiful.

Yang Huashan: This spot happens to have some hidden reefs here, and there are more swimming crabs around the hidden reefs.

With good luck, a single fishing boat like this can catch several hundred jin in one day. The fishermen throw cages made of iron frames and netting into the sea, and the crabs crawl into the cages on their own to sneak a bite of the bait.

Yang Huashan: There is feed in the middle here, and it crawls in through this hole.

Reporter: And then it can't get out?

Yang Huashan: It can't get out, and then it hides down here, just like this, it can't get out.

Reporter: It's right in here?

Yang Huashan: Right.

Reporter: When were these nets put in?

Yang Huashan: Put in yesterday, and then we come to collect them today.

Reporter: How many cages do you set down in one night?

Yang Huashan: He set down more than 2,000 cages like this. He does it in batches. For example, he collects these today, sets them down again today, and collects the others tomorrow. Today he is collecting seven or eight hundred, and the boat next door is collecting too. This entire area is all set for this kind of swimming crab.

There are many fishing boats on Daisong Island that catch swimming crabs. The fishermen told the reporter that even though they are all swimming crabs, the price difference is huge. Yang Huashan immediately ordered more than 5,000 jin of swimming crabs, thinking he had gotten a great bargain.

Yang Huashan: To tell soft from hard, you feel it with your hand and give it a squeeze. This one is hard, and this kind is softer. This kind's color should be a bit lighter, while this one's color is a bit darker. The hard one has meat, and the soft one has relatively little meat. For the soft-shell kind, the price is relatively cheap. For hard-shell, it is fifty or sixty yuan per jin, while soft-shell only costs a bit over twenty yuan per jin.

But the fishermen all said Yang Huashan had suffered a big loss. Hard-shell swimming crabs are highly sought after in the market, and the price at the place of production reaches more than 50 yuan per jin. Soft-shell swimming crabs, however, cannot fetch a good price.

Yang Guoxiang: Almost everything we haul to market is hard-shell swimming crab. Soft-shell swimming crab is generally unwanted. Because only with red roe does it taste good, and soft-shell swimming crab usually has no red roe inside, so it is not fragrant when eaten and does not taste good.

In the eyes of many fishermen, Yang Huashan is just a greenhorn who does not know the trade and knows nothing about the sea. He even gets seasick when going out to fish if the wind and waves are a bit strong.

Yang Huashan: I got seasick.

Yang Muqiang: He can't fish, that's for sure, and he can't farm fish either, that's also for sure.

Yang Wenhui: With theory but no practice, there is definitely no way. Others also watch him and say this won't work and that won't work.

Ever since Yang Huashan returned to Daisong Island five years ago to start a business, his methods have been constantly controversial. And Yang Huashan says that when he first returned to Daisong Island, it was because he discovered something on the island that could make him rich overnight. What is going on?

This is the first cross-sea road built on Daisong Island in 2000. Daisong Island is located in the east of Zhangpu County, Fujian Province. It is a purely fishing island. It used to be separated from the mainland, with inconvenient transportation and great isolation. The villagers on the island almost all make a living by fishing. Fishing means working from dawn to dusk and is very hard, so young people generally are unwilling to come back.

Lin Xiaobin: The young people in the village, especially those who have studied at university outside, mostly do not like to come back, because after all, the outside world is more exciting.

Yang Gusong: Young people generally are unwilling to come back once they go out. They generally want to make their way outside, because the world outside is broader.

In 2010, Yang Huashan, who had graduated from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University with a degree in food engineering, returned to Daisong Island from Xiamen, and declared that he had found something on the small island that could make him rich overnight.

Yang Huashan: Because in one month or two months it can make money. If it grows well and develops well, it can show results in a short time, so that means this kind of thing suits the mentality of being eager for quick success, the mentality of getting rich overnight.

Yang Huashan's claim seemed somewhat unrealistic to his wife Li Zehong. His wife felt that Yang Huashan returned to the small island to look for opportunities actually because he had been unable to find a satisfactory job since graduating from university.

Li Zehong: At the time I thought he was a bit stuck between being too good for ordinary jobs and not good enough for the best ones, so in the end he gave up looking for a job and decided to start his own business.

The villagers were even less convinced that Yang Huashan could make anything of himself on the island. Everyone knew Yang Huashan, who had grown up on Daisong Island, very well. He was not good at dealing with the sea. But Yang Huashan did not care. He felt he had discovered an opportunity to make a name for himself.

Yang Huashan: If this industry gets big, it can drive a dozen or twenty households to farm it. Because since a university student has come back, if what you do is the same as what these villagers do, then you can't show your value. The power of example.

Reporter: So at the time you especially wanted to become a role model?

Yang Huashan: Right.

So what exactly is the thing Yang Huashan mentioned that could make him rich overnight? It is called longxucai, also known as abalone vegetable. It can be used to feed abalone, and can also be supplied to hotels as a side dish.

Yang Huashan: What I valued was that, for example, the seedlings bought back are two yuan per jin, and for it to grow this big takes only 20 days. For example, if this is one liang, it can become one jin, which means it can increase tenfold and become 20 yuan. Seeing this, I felt this was an industry that could make money very quickly.

In October 2011, Yang Huashan used 30,000 yuan he had saved from work to bring in a batch of longxucai seedlings. He believed that at the time there were more than a hundred abalone farms in Gulei Town, not far from Daisong Island, that needed longxucai, so the market was not a problem. If he could be the first to farm longxucai on Daisong Island and turn it into an industry, he would certainly make everyone convinced.

Yang Huashan set his mind on longxucai and was determined to become the village's role model, but before long, longxucai turned Yang Huashan into the village joke.

In October 2011, the small island was hit by a typhoon, but Yang Huashan had already bought the longxucai seedlings two or three days earlier. If he did not promptly put them into the offshore farm, they would rot. He could only grit his teeth and go out to sea to plant the seedlings.

Yang Huashan: There was no other way but to go out. Once out there, the waves were too big, and with waves too big I got seasick, so seasick that I really could not take it anymore. Out at sea, because going out to plant the seedlings takes six or seven hours, you yourself think about jumping into the sea and swimming back to shore, but jumping in definitely would not work, the waves were so big you would be swept away in an instant. My dad could not stand watching it and came back, and the boat came back, and whatever seedlings were not planted were just left unplanted.