Catching insects that live on the Red River, fishermen earn millions of VND per night

This type of insect is as big as a grasshopper, soft and white, only lasts a few hours, but can be processed into an attractive dish up to a million VND / kg.
Considered the only insect found in the Red River and appears several times a year at the end of spring, these days, fishermen along the Red River are busy with the pretend hunting season – a specialty of few people. known.

Living in a riverside village in Van Giang district (Hung Yen), Ms. Nguyen Thi Thuy said, the pretend is a specialty only available in the Red River. Their larvae live in water, only surface once a year to molt and then fly to the surface to lay eggs. Close-up of the child pretending to be outside the Red River. (Photo: Van Thanh). According to Ms. Thuy, when she was a child, many children appeared pretending to be, but suddenly about 20 years they disappeared, causing nostalgia for generations of fishing villages. However, about 3 years ago, pretending to appear many times made the people of the fishing village excited to come out and get together to go out and pretend from 3am. “I pretend to only appear once a year around February to March of the lunar calendar and only live about 2 hours. To get rid of it, most of my family had to stay up all night to see if the next day’s situation would pretend or not. If there is, by about 4 am, the pretense will start to float, and the river will be completely flown by about 6am, ”Ms. Thuy said. The child pretends to be a specialty only available in the Red River, which can be purchased at quite high prices. On the day of pretending to appear, dozens of fishing boats with nets attached to the nose of the boat ran along the river. When it is clear, it is also the end of the fake harvest. Because people were brought up from the riverbank, people gathered and bought them all. At the beginning of the crop, the price was high, about 500,000 VND / kg, every day when it was picked up, it was about 300,000 VND / kg. “On average, my family can salvage about 3-5 kg ​​a day, but there is a record day that my house can salvage nearly 40 kg. Bring it to the market, have not yet sold out all. Because it only appears a few days / month, it is necessary to be able to watch it to avoid the end of the season ”, Ms. Thuy said. Nearly 20 years of “losing track”, about 3 years ago, the pretend started to appear again. As the owner of a famous restaurant in Ngoc Thuy, Long Bien (Hanoi), but Van Thanh still goes out and pretends because this is an insect that has attached to the childhood of riverside children like him. At the same time, he used pretend to cook into dishes to serve guests to eat at his restaurant. In order to catch the pretense, fishermen like Thanh had to prepare from 3am, use a fixed net at the nose of the boat and pick them up because they only appeared from 4-6am and disappeared. According to Thanh, there are not every place where there are pretensions, but only at the confluence of the river where there is a lot of soil for them to nest. “Usually it takes a lot of attention to be able to watch the right day of pretending to molt because only 1-2 times a month. After 2 molting, they lay eggs and then die. Eggs hatch into larvae and return to the river bed waiting for the day to be molested on the surface “, Mr. Thanh said. After being processed, the baby becomes a specialty, with the price up to a million VND / kg. After picking up, Mr. Thanh processed many dishes to serve diners such as pretending to braise fish, pretend soup, pretending to roast honey leaves, and pretending to fry eggs … If he can save a lot, he proceeds to preserve it. separate to be used all year. “From the beginning of the crop up to now I have picked up 2 times, each time about 10-20kg. If selling fresh, it is only about 500,000 VND / kg but processed, each kilo can make 4 plates with the price from 200-300,000 VND / plate. So, each kilo of pretense will cost about 1 million dong ”, Mr. Thanh shared. I pretended to be a phytoplankton, after molting, only lived a few hours on the water. According to the book “Ten thousand questions of why”, I pretend to belong to the set of Ephemeral Wings, a set belonging to a group of Palaeoptera, together with the order of Dragonflies, whose scientific name is Ephemeroptera. They are twofold. After the second time, they only have one pair of wings and then live for only a few hours. The longest lifespan of pretending is not more than a week. The larvae of the child pretend to live in the water, after rolling a few times to become the same. When it becomes a coincidence, its body is soft, light emitting, the two antennae on the head are like a dagger, at the end of the abdomen grows 3 tail feathers. In the evening the children pretend to gather, fly over the water to perform mating. After the sex is finished, pretend the female spawns the eggs in the water. The vast majority of them to the next day “deadlock”.