Fish sold with conscience

   Fish stall owner, Mr. Chen, living in Luchou, began to do business, so as to live a carefree life. He had been selling fish for 20 years. He used to earn more than  100,000 a  month in good time. He could only earn NT$40,000 to 50,000 a  month right now, due to the bad time and more competitors. He confessed that “Three meals were no problem, but it’s difficult to earn a little more money”.
     Mr. Chen said that non-steeped fish would have its eyes caved after only two days, with freshness half left, as well as the price declined a little. He would have fish, that hadn’t been sold out the day before, killed and eaten with neighbors. He had mixed feelings that he wanted to sell fish with conscience, but customers would mind its high price.      

      What was “fish with conscience”? That was fish which hadn’t been steeped in water. What kind of water? That’s Formalin, one of antiseptic, which could make fish fresh for a week, and fish’s gill appeared red and stomach pretty, too. The meat of fish felt flexible and its color wouldn’t even fade. If squid once steeped in water, its meat would look very white and good, even thicker than its origin (inflating once being steeped in water). Mr. Chen said that if you wanted to buy cheap fish (steeped fish), that would be “3 goods plus one goods”,”4 goods” pronounced “death goods” in Chinese.

      Mr. Chen would cater to tough customers’ likes and advice them not to buy sometimes. Most of them were patrons, aged over 30, men and women. There was some special customers, saying that” I don’t care about price, as long as it’s fresh.” So Mr. Chen would call them, immediately fresh goods arrived. The most memorable anecdote was that some customer had ever introduce a girl friend to him, which he considered a joke, but it turned out that he took his sister there. The most precious experience he got was that” you have to be bold, endurable, and flattering.”, so he described his face “as thick as wall”.

       Mr. Chen had a particular experience of emergency. He said that if you were carelessly stabbed by a fish (any aquatic animals), no matter big or small wounds, you had to keep compressing and compressing the wound, enduring pain, until blood of bacteria were all out. Then had a wash and put some medicine. I swore no problem. If you didn’t make the blood out, the bacteria would run with blood, swelling up as a result. If you went to sea-fishing, and got hurt, easily, compress the blood out and have a pee to flush the wound. Due to the ammonia of the urine, you would be OK soon.