October is an exciting time in southern China. As cold air seeped in, the market of Chinese Mitten Crabs flourished again. Crab farmers worked harder, afraid of not catching enough crabs; old people could make 700 RMB a day just by tying up crabs. Last year, 6.8 billion Mitten Crabs were eaten by hundreds of thousands of Chinese crab fans.

Three days ago, I travelled to Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou - the source of crabs with the best quality, the haven for crab eaters – hopefully to explore some interesting or hidden secrets about Chinese Mitten Crabs and of course eat some.

Upon arrival near the shore at about half past nine, I caught a small boat carrying two people returning to the shore.

The discovery was made that the two people, Justin and his son Maxx, were passionate fishing lovers with experience in both sea fishing and lake fishing. It turned out that they just finished a not very successful fishing activity.

“We woke up at 5 today and fished for 4 hours, not catching one single fish!”

Justin explained that all the fish in the lake were already too full, eating food that were supposed to be for the crabs. “The fish would not be attracted by our bait.” What could we say - was it a comedy or a tragedy for these two fishing lovers in this crab season?

What was really inspiring was the answer to the question whether it was worth waking up at five o’clock. Maxx jumped and told me “It is definitely worth doing! You won’t know it unless you try. And we actually caught three crabs and ate them on the boat!”