On the morning of May 14th, 2021, I was invited by a friend of Beihai TV's program “Pearl Breeders in Ancient Pearl Pools” to dive and shoot the underwater footage of the pearl farm in Nanwan, Weizhou Island.

Nanwan, located on the south side of Weizhou Island, opens to the south and is enclosed by a curved rocky coast in the west and a sandy coast in the north. The western end is Crocodile Mouth and the eastern end is Piggyback Ridge. Crocodile Hill, located at the southwest corner of Weizhou Island, is the highest point on Weizhou Island. From a distance, it looks like a lowly crocodile with its mouth pressed against the surface of the sea, waiting for its prey. The Piggy Ridge at the eastern end, separated from the main island by the sea at high tide, is named after the piggy snail (Mauritia arabica), which used to be abundant, and resembles a stubborn dolphin, with its head arched to the south, welcoming the waves and listening to the waves.

Weizhou Island was formed by a volcanic eruption, and Nanwan Bay is the crater of the erupting volcano. Nowadays, Nanwan is a blue bay with sparkling waves and fishing sails on sunny days when the winds and waves are calm and on cloudy days when the winds and tides are strong, the waves are fierce and lapping at the shore. For a long time, the South Bay is the fishermen's mooring port, but also was the island's few shellfish farming waters. Currently, part of the sea is cultivated with mother-of-pearl shellfish, which is used to cultivate South Pearls. Today, I am going to dive into the water to observe and photograph the mother-of-pearl shellfish farming.

The allusion to the “Pearl Returning to Hepu” has made Hepu pearls famous. Qu Dajun in the Ming Dynasty in its compilation of “Guangdong new language” wrote: “Hepu pearl name is said to be the South Pearl, which is out of the Western Ocean is said to be the West Pearl, out of the Eastern Ocean is said to be the East Pearl. East pearl beans green and white, its light is not as good as the West Pearl, West Pearl is not as good as the South Pearl. South Pearl from Lei, Lian to Jiao-toe, thousands of miles between the six pools, out of the broken hope on the next bamboo forest, the next Yangmei, the next Pingshan, to the Wu Nai for the next, but all the beauty of the ocean beads.” Broken Hope is said to be near Weizhou (Fig. 1). It can be seen that Weizhou has been producing fine pearls since ancient times. Tang Xianzu wrote in his poem, “Yangjiang River to Avoid the Heat and Enter the Sea, to Weizhou, and Watching the Pearl Pond at Night, Sending to Guo Lianzhou,” “The Crossing Pond hangs with treasures, and the long night brings out the light of the pearl,” which also proves that Weizhou pearls have been produced since the ancient times. It also proves that Weizhou pearls have been a rare treasure since ancient times. Even today, when diving in Weizhou, one can still see Pinctada maxima (white butterfly shells), which means that mother-of-pearl shells have been found in Weizhou both in ancient and modern times. In this way, the cultivation of Pinctada maxima on Weizhou Island is not without its advantages.

Figure 1 Location Map of the Seven Ancient Pearl Ponds

In ancient times, natural pearls were collected. By the Ming Dynasty, natural south pearls were basically depleted due to over-collection. Nowadays, almost all the pearls we see are artificially cultivated pearls. The so-called artificially cultivated pearls, that is, the artificial pearl nucleus implanted in the tissue of mother-of-pearl, mother-of-pearl secretion pearl layer wrapped around the pearl nucleus, so that the mother-of-pearl cultivation for a few years, artificially cultivated pearls can be harvested.

At 10:00 a.m., I brought my diving gear and photography equipment and took a wooden boat to the South Bay Pearl Farm. Not far from the shore is Ma's mother-of-pearl hanging place, rows of floats are strung up by the cable floating in the calm sea, under the rope hanging Ma's mother-of-pearl.

I dived into the water and saw that the rectangular sheet cages were suspended at a depth of about 1 meter under the cables, and each mesh pocket contained 2 rows of marmorated mussels, with 5 groups of 4 marmorated mussels in each row (Fig. 2). The owner of the farm told me that this is the method of mother-of-pearl cage culture that they learned from Japan, and the advantages of using sheet cages for mother-of-pearl cage culture are that it is easy to clean the mother-of-pearl shells, favorable to the feeding of mother-of-pearl shells, and more resistant to wind and waves because of the good permeability of the water.

Fig. 2 Mussel suspended in a netting.

In addition to the longline method, there is also the floating raft method. After completing the underwater photography of the longline method, I moved to a nearby raft and again went into the water to photograph the raft-type cultured marmorated marmorated mussels. Under the raft, there were two types of marmorated mussel culture containers suspended from the longline, a conical cage and a box-shaped cage. The conical cages contained nucleated marmorated marmorated mussels and the box cages contained marmorated marmorated mussels undergoing postoperative treatment, i.e., treatment of the marmorated mussels after implantation of the nuclei to allow them to regain their vitality.

Fig. 3 Marbled Murrelets suspended under a floating raft.

While I was photographing underwater, a group of money fish (Scatophagus argus) appeared and repeatedly swam around me. Apparently, I am an outsider invading their space, and they are sizing me up as an uninvited guest and showing their defense of their “sovereignty”. Well, I won't intrude any more. After I finished shooting, I surfaced, loosened the mouthpiece of my snorkel, took a deep breath of natural air, and completely relaxed my body.

The cultivation of marmorated mother-of-pearl in the South Bay of Weizhou Island began with the Japanese company Shiratori, which operated between 1997 and 2000. The current mother-of-pearl farming in Nanwan is a product of the “Revitalizing the Pearl Industry and Promoting Pearl Culture” initiative deployed by Beihai City. The pearl industry of Beihai City was once brilliant, and in November 1958, the first seawater cultured pearl in China was born in Beihai. From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, the pearl farms in Hepu County developed from 26 to 1,728, the number of employees increased from 377 to 15,368, the output of pearls soared from 35 kilograms to 5,230 kilograms, and the sales amounted to 93,650,000 yuan, which has formed a complete industrial system of artificial seedling, shellfish cultivation, artificial nucleus planting, bead cultivation, bead harvesting, acquisition, processing and sales, etc. The pearl industry in Beihai City used to be brilliant. On October 10, 1991, Beihai City hosted the first International Pearl Festival, and in 1995, the city's pearl production reached a peak of 8.8 tons. Gradually, however, pearls, which were once used by officials and noblemen to show off their status, became an ordinary accessory for the common people, and even a string of pearls was hung under the neck of a young girl who had not yet dried up. Pearl value due to the poor quality of pearls and depreciation of the pearl industry in Beihai flourished and declined, “the East Pearl as the West Pearl, the West Pearl as the South Pearl” has become a banter, to comfort themselves.

Fig. 4 The building built by the Japanese Hakubutsu Company during the cultivation of Hepu mother-of-pearl shells preserved on Weizhou Island.

Since ancient times, pearls have been known as jewelry. Wang Jian wrote in “Ballad of the Sea People”, “The sea people have no home to live in the sea, and they pick pearls and serve the elephants for the yearly payment. Wicked waves across the sky and mountains blocked the road, and the Weiyang Palace was always full of treasures.” See the hard work of the pearl pickers and the luxury of the pearl owners. About the pearl, the ancient people's understanding of the different people today, the correct understanding of the long-term process of the removal of the false and the true.

Cave Memorial” said, from Chang'an nine thousand miles south of the sun, ”people seven feet long, hair to the heel, ride the rhinoceros elephant car. Ride the elephant into the seabed to take the treasure, stayed in the shark's house, get teardrops, the sharks weeping beads, also known as weeping beads.” . Ri Nanzhu is the so-called South Pearl? It is not known, but Li Bai in his poem: “the tide is still returning to the sea, but the flow of people to Wu. When we meet each other and ask about our sorrows, we cry out the Rizhu.” In his poem, Li Bai expressed his deep love for the Ri Nanzhu.

As early as in the first century A.D., the westerners that the pearl is a sunny day when the dew drops into the surface of the water after the formation of the open beads, if the day is warm and sunny, the dew crystal, the pearl is also bright and shiny, and vice versa when the sky is cloudy, the pearl is dark and dull. Ancient Roman scholars thought that the pearl is the shell of the teardrops, or the crystallization of the tears of angels, and the Chinese ancient so for the tears of the sharks coincide. Ancient Greek scholars thought that the pearl is lightning into the sea and become. The famous navigator Columbus thought, pearl is the dew drops on the mangrove leaves into the sea and formed. It wasn't until 1671 that an Italian physicist and naturalist named Fransesco Redi claimed that pearls were formed when grains of sand entered the mother-of-pearl shells, and the knowledge of how pearls are formed finally became more reliable. In 1907, a Japanese scientist named Tokichi Nishikowa finally unraveled the secret of pearl formation with clarity. He realized that if a parasitic foreign object that entered a mother-of-pearl shell was wrapped in an outer membrane that secreted nacreous layer, the nacreous layer secreting cells would form a sheath to encase the object, layer after layer, until the pearl was formed. After two thousand years, mankind has finally recognized the truth of pearl formation! Despite the millennia that have passed since the error was deduced to the correct knowledge, pearls have been a beloved treasure of mankind, a symbol of power and wealth for a long time, the most precious of all treasures.

The production of artificially cultivated pearls undoubtedly originated in China. In the thirteenth century, our ancestors began to use natural pearl shells to produce pearls by inserting a foreign object into the shell's outer coat membrane to obtain artificially cultivated pearls. For centuries, the Chinese have implanted small Buddha statues into the outer mantle of the freshwater Cristaria plicata mussel, which secretes a layer of pearls that envelops the statue and becomes a crystalline pearl Buddha statue that is offered to devotees. Until today, pearl Buddha statues are still produced according to the law.

Once a precious treasure of the South Pearl, pearls around the world competing for the color of the moment, gradually declining, the scenery is no longer. Around the world, there are South Asia's Sri Lankan pearls, Tahitian pearls of the Pacific Islands, Venezuelan pearls of South America, Australian pearls, Panama pearls, Persian Gulf pearls and so on. In addition to saltwater pearls, there are freshwater pearls. There are white pearls, black pearls, and gold pearls. They are either crystalline and pure, or iridescent and colorful, so that people fall in love at first sight, can not stop, and have to be generous, picking pearls and go.

The key to revitalize the South Pearl lies in building up the market's confidence and love for the South Pearl. In the face of a round pearl, who can not be moved and hold back from laying their hands on it?

Written by Zhou Hao Lang

Photo: Han Jian, Zhou Haolang

Audit: Yan Bing