Jiang Hai followed the siblings from rock to rock, prying dark clusters of shells off the reef.
"Those are haihong—mussels," Ai Xiaoxi explained with a grin. "They're great steamed."
Jiang Hai had eaten mussels plenty of times back in Bingcheng, where they sell for only a few yuan per jin, but he hadn't harvested them himself. With the small curved shovel he began levering the tight-lipped shells free. The mollusks were tougher than he expected, though sheer strength soon won out; in less than half an hour he had half a bucket full.
"That's enough, or we'll carry nothing but mussels home," Xiaoxi laughed. She and her brother dumped Jiang Hai's haul onto the sand, kept the largest shells, and tossed the rest back into the tide pools. Even after culling, their combined buckets still held ten-odd kilos.
Once the water had slipped farther away the real hunt began.
Ai Xiaohui was the first to shout. He drove the curved shovel into wet sand and flipped out a fat, pale-yellow shell more than a hand-length long.
"Wow, that's a monster!" Jiang Hai knelt to brush away sand. It was a razor clam—what people back north call xiao ren xian. Bingcheng folk prized them for their sweetness and thin shells.
"This one's over twelve centimetres," Xiaohui beamed, rinsing it in seawater before dropping it into his bucket. He demonstrated how to spot the tiny breathing holes on the sand's surface, but Jiang Hai tried several times and came up empty, while the siblings uncovered clam after clam.
Giving up on digging, Jiang Hai turned to the exposed flats. The retreating tide left all sorts of life behind—tiny fish, shrimp, starfish, and plenty of shellfish. He wandered between the rocks, collecting the bigger curiosities. Two starfish went into his pail; he couldn't eat them, but the twitching rows of tube feet were fascinating—if a bit nightmarish for anyone with trypophobia.
Kicking aside a loose stone, he startled a crab the size of a child's fist. It dashed for cover, but Jiang Hai was quicker: he pinched one rear leg, flipped it over, and clamped its carapace between thumb and forefinger before the claws could snap shut.
"Nice catch!" Xiaoxi hurried over with string to truss the writhing crab. "That's a sand crab. Good eating."
"Brother-in-law, you take crabs, we'll stick to clams!" Xiaohui shouted, already back to digging.
"No problem." Jiang Hai grinned and set to work. Under nearly every stone scuttled another sand crab; he released the small ones and tied the keepers. Before long his bucket rattled with crustaceans.
Turning a flat slab, he uncovered a deep-blue crab with one outsized claw. Instead of fleeing, it raised its weapon defiantly.
"What's this bruiser?" he asked.
"Fiddler crab," Xiaoxi said. "Same family as sand crabs—just don't let that big claw pinch you." She looped string around the crab and dropped it in, then hurried off to help her brother.
Once Jiang Hai recognized the telltale burrows and stone piles, the catch rate soared. By the time Xiaohui called out that the tide was turning, Jiang Hai's bucket was heaped with twitching sand and fiddler crabs, while the siblings' pails brimmed with razor clams.
They had been at it for more than three hours; the sun now stood high, hunger finally replacing excitement. Jiang Hai looked at the living bounty—with mussels keening open, clams squirting brine, and crabs clattering angrily—and let a satisfied smile spread across his face. Supper would be magnificent.