If catching fish in the dark is impressive, imagine eating a slippery minnow with no hands while hanging upside down.
Dawn, over the karst hills in Guilin, these remarkable hills own their perculiar shapes to the mildly acid water of the Li river, whose meandering course over eons of ime has coroded away to their bases until the rocky course remained. Li, is one of the cleanest rivers in China, a favorite spot for fisher men with that trained cormorants. The men, all called Huang, come from the same village, now in their senventies and eighties, they have been fisher men all their lives. Before they release the birds, they tie a llose, loose them around their necks, just stop them swallowing any fish they may catch.
Chancing and dancing, the Huangs encourage their birds to take the plunge. Underwater, the commorant's hunting instinct kicks in, turning them into fish-seeking missiles. Working together, a good commorant team can catch a couple dosen of decent size fish in the morning. The birds return to the rafts with that fish because they have been trained to do so. From the time it's first catched, each of these commorants has been read to a life of obedience to his master. The birds are, in effect, slaves. But they are not stupid.
It's said that the commorants can keep a tiny fish as they catch, at least up to seven. So unless they get a reward now and then, they simply withdraw their labor. The fisher men, of course, keep the best fish for themselves, the commorants get the leftover tiddlers.
With its collar removed, the birds can at last swallow his prize. Best of all, one it isn't meant to have.
These days, competition from modern fishing techniques means Huangs cann't make a living from traditional commorant fishing alone and this 1300-years-old tradition is now practised mostly to entertain tourists.
But on the Caohai lake in nearby Guizhou province, an even more unusual fishing industry is alive and well. Gen ZHuansheng is on his way to set up his net for the night.