Winter fishing in northeast China's Chagan Lake boosts local economy

The winter fishing tradition at Chagan Lake in northeast China's Songyuan City has become a significant economic driver for the local community, with a thriving market driven by fish sales, restaurant bookings, and nationwide deliveries.

In a time-honored tradition, residents near the lake continue to practice the ancient art of ice fishing, where they manually drill holes through the frozen surface and cast nets beneath the icy depths to reel in their catch.

The ice-fishing season, which typically starts in mid-December and lasts through February, has been recognized as a national intangible cultural heritage. "Our trawl nets have a mesh size of about four to five cun (around 13-17 centimeters), allowing fish weighing under two to three jin (about 1 to 1.5 kilograms) to escape. This ensures that only larger fish are caught. This year, we're catching even bigger fish than in previous years, with many weighing over 20 jin (about 10 kilograms)," said Chen Jie, the head fisherman.

The cultural significance of fish as a symbol of wealth in Chinese culture has turned the areas around Chagan Lake into a tourist hub, with visitors eager to explore the local fishing heritage and savor the freshest catches in traditional dishes. "The most important thing for us here is to try the fish. I hope that after eating it, we'll have abundance year after year and be blessed with good fortune," said Chen Changsheng, a tourist from Shanghai.

The influx of visitors during the winter fishing season has significantly boosted revenue for local restaurants.

"We've pre-purchased at least 150,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan (about 21,000 to 27,000 U.S. dollars) worth of fish in anticipation of visitors during the winter fishing season. The highest single-day turnover reached nearly 50,000 yuan (about 6850 U.S. dollars) during last year's peak season," said Qu Lijie, a local restaurant owner.

For those unable to visit in person, freshly caught fish from the lake can still be ordered online and delivered directly to customers' doorsteps.

Now delivery hubs in the region are operating around the clock to meet the overwhelming demand for orders.

"Orders this year have so far increased by about 20 percent year-on-year. Supporting the local winter fishing economy creates a win-win situation, driving our own business growth," said Wu Shuai, head of Songyang Area of the SF Express.

To further capitalize on the region's abundant fishery resources and winter fishing tradition, the 23rd Ice and Snow Fishing and Hunting Cultural Tourism Festival is currently underway in Songyuan. The event, which kicked off on Saturday, offers a feast of delicious food, stunning sights, and exciting activities, welcoming visitors from all over.

"They are giving facilities to the people to come here and enjoy. It's a beautiful festival," shared Tayyab Murtaza, a Pakistani student.

"I would like to play snow-wall soccer. Also, I tried ice monkey. This game was super fun. So, yeah, I've been enjoying it," said Brianna Karioki, a student from the U.S.

Winter fishing in northeast China's Chagan Lake boosts local economy

Chinese stock markets dropped on Monday, as AI and tech stocks continued to see-saw, according to China Global Television Network (CGTN) market analyst Timothy Pope.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed down 0.59 percent at 3,882.01 points, with the Shenzhen Component Index, which has more exposure to the tech sector, closing 2.13 percent lower at 13,794.29 points.

Trading volumes on the two indices rose with around 2.01 trillion yuan (about 296.28 billion U.S. dollars) traded on Monday, up from 1.88 trillion yuan (about 280 billion U.S. dollars) last Friday.

Traditional sectors such as precious metals, coal mining, and insurance led the gains, while bio-tech stocks were among the top decliners.

The ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, lost 3.21 percent to close at 3,431.89 points on Monday.

The STAR Composite Index, which tracks the performance of stocks on China's sci-tech innovation board, closed 3.10 percent lower on Monday at 1,896.16 points.

"The A-share markets seem locked in this cycle of rally and rout for those growth stocks, particularly in the AI and adjacent sectors. Today was very much on the rout side so, while the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.6 percent, we saw the Shenzhen Component down more than 2 percent, the ChiNext board was down 3.2 percent and the STAR 50 down 3.1 percent. Those last three are more exposed to the tech rally than the Shanghai Composite. The big losers as I said were AI hardware companies - Shenzhen Gongjin Electronics was down 10 percent, Zhongji Innolight fell more than 7 percent. But they weren't alone because the other big winning sector of the last few weeks - biotech - was in retreat today as well. Investors were rotating into gold and coal stocks as well, and agricultural stocks extended the food security trade rally that we saw at the end of last week. There were a number of stocks across those sectors, all of those were hitting the upper limits of trade today," said Pope.

Pope said the rest of the week will be dominated by earnings reports from some of China’s biggest companies.

"The rest of the week is going to be mostly about earnings. The end-of-August filing deadline is fast approaching. Friday will be a really big day on the earnings calendar. We've got BYD, PetroChina, Shenhua Energy and a lot of big banks as well. Earnings that we are going to see for ICBC, China Merchants Bank and others will give us an insight into how much pressure the big banks are under with their margins. BYD is also going to be an interesting one in light of the government's anti-involution campaign and its efforts to avert a bit of a race to the bottom in the EV sector. And before we get there, there are Nvidia results in the US on Wednesday which will doubtless impact every stock in the AI space," he said.

Chinese stock markets start week lower on AI volatility: analyst