Twenty years of cold chain

The night was deep in the air at the Panhu Fishing Port Technology Center.

A young man who looked to be in his mid-twenties stood ramrod straight outside an office, holding a blue folder. Although he wasn't young, he still looked somewhat naive, dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt, with a backpack slung over one arm.

He wore his hair in a short side parting.

Blinking rapidly, after waiting for more than half an hour, a middle-aged man wearing a dark gray long-sleeved shirt that almost reached his knees finally walked over. This middle-aged man, wearing an octagonal hat, looked considerably older. He glanced at the young man…

Without saying much, he slowly took out his key and opened the door.

Upon entering the office, the middle-aged man was seen boiling water and preparing tea.

Everything he did seemed to move in slow motion, which annoyed the young man, who quickly stepped forward and placed the folder on the table.

"Uncle, this is my fourth draft, I'm really desperate if it doesn't work!"

The middle-aged man was in no hurry. He waited until the water boiled and he brewed tea before opening the folder. However, after looking at it for less than two minutes, his expression was exactly the same as the previous times. He lazily pushed the folder forward and started blowing on the tea.

Seeing this, the young man seemed to be consumed by anger, and could no longer contain himself. He blurted out, "Uncle! What exactly do you want me to do! I've looked at countless plans, and none of them are as detailed as mine. I really have no room for improvement!"

The middle-aged man, his expression unchanged, slowly shook his head. "Hongyuan,"

You have no idea what a detailed plan is. If I were to show this to certain people, it wouldn't even qualify as a plan.

These provocative words infuriated the young man. "All you do is point fingers! You do nothing but talk the talk! Ever since I started school, you've said that technical skills are the only secure job, and now look what's going on! You don't do any technical work, and when it comes to actually doing it, you're just some administrative director! You tear things down and start over whenever you see them. Do you even understand anything about technology?!"

The young man, still seething with anger, is named Guo Hongyuan. He is a marine science major at Panhu Ocean University and will graduate with a master's degree this fall. The Guo family is not only wealthy and powerful, but years of dedicated research in oceanography have also opened a magnificent door for Guo Hongyuan.

With his talent and industry knowledge, he overcame all obstacles, but he couldn't get past his uncle's opinion. The Guo family cared a lot about this man's views. Although in recent years this man had become someone who handled recruitment, attendance, and spent his free time playing chess and raising birds, he still had a past that left a deep impression on the Guo family.

These repeated failures were infuriating, and he felt like he was being deliberately blocked here.

Hearing this, the middle-aged man wasn't surprised at all; instead, he smiled slightly.

"Hongyuan, a detailed plan doesn't rely on various citations; only by developing your own original ideas can you truly provide a comprehensive solution."

Citing evidence is like adding fuel to the fire. Yours, however, is like a sack stuffed with chaff—it's tasteless and won't even earn you support.

This analogy nearly made Guo Hongyuan explode. He hurriedly stepped forward, grabbed the folder back, and his eyes were almost brimming with tears. "I'm never looking for you again! All you do is belittle and mock! I'm going home to sue you! I'm going to sue you, you old bastard!"

"Hongyuan, it's not that I look down on you, it's that you don't have a real solution at all. All you see is the future. Cultivating the sea and raising fish is such a huge concept. If you really intend to make it a career you're committed to, this kind of preparation is far from enough."

As the administrative director said, marine farming is another vast and promising field to explore in the new era. Internationally, it is known as "marine ranching." This concept is very simple to understand: it treats the ocean as grassland and fish and shrimp as cattle and sheep, carrying out large-scale aquaculture in a pre-existing territory. It is estimated that its benefits are more than ten times those of farmland.

The reason behind this is quite simple: "humans are eating all the fish in the coastal waters." In order to exploit the wealth of the coastal waters, some fishermen have frequently engaged in malicious fishing practices such as electrofishing, poisoning fish, and blasting fish. At the same time, the huge market demand is also stimulating the rapid rise of marine ranches.

Marine ranching is not a new concept. Since the beginning of the new century, China has been constructing artificial reefs. However, despite more than a decade of development, it has not yet achieved large-scale industrialization or a base-like scale. Under the new circumstances of the 12th Five-Year Plan, and with existing experience to draw upon, this new aquaculture model, this "blue granary," is receiving increasing attention.

"Isn't a promising future enough? For startups, this kind of untapped market is the most important thing. If I don't look at this, what else should I look at!"

"Every day, many promising ideas emerge in this world, but how many people actually succeed? Your proposal paints a picture of what marine life will bring—protecting the ocean, increasing production and efficiency—words that any literate person can say. You haven't clearly explained how you intend to do it, because you yourself are still vague about it. You're just making empty promises to the Panhu District Committee, and you still expect to get their support?"

Guo Hongyuan didn't want to stay there for another second. "What else can we do? Build artificial reefs, release fish fry, use backtracking technology—there are tons of things we can learn from abroad. That's how marine ranches are done. What new ideas can I come up with?"

But just then, with a thud, a fist slammed onto the table. "If things were as simple as you say, the world would be full of marine ranches! You're vague on the technology, only knowing about overseas. Even if you had the technology, without a systematic cold chain support, how would you store and transport the goods in a marine ranch!"

"If you don't explain these things clearly, what kind of detailed plan is it? Our technology is not mature, and there is no storage and transportation model that can be copied. Of course, if you are willing to spend tens of millions to try and fail, then disregard what I said."

Once the words "tens of millions" were uttered, Guo Hongyuan's expression softened. After a long pause, he softly said, "But Uncle, I really don't know how else to write it."

"Hongyuan, I can submit your proposal anytime, but I know it won't even make a splash. The industry is improving every day, and the forecasts are full of promise, but that doesn't mean everything will come to fruition. The truly effective and practical proposal is the one I showed you back then, the fishing port area three-zone plan. It's something you can see in three dimensions right from the paper. It doesn't just tell you how great the future is with a single sentence or chart. Instead, it makes you realize that as long as you follow this path, towering buildings will naturally appear in your mind."

"Uncle, that's different! That was done by a large group of experts and scholars like you. How can mine be compared to that?"

"No, that was the result of one person's efforts. If I remember correctly, he was about your age back then."

……

I've loved cold chain logistics for twenty years.