Wu jin/Shanghai Daily news

Due to his courage in face of the challenges, Huang Chun, a 38-year-old crab feeder has become an envied entrepreneur in Chongming County.
He is the president of Shanghai Baodao Crab Trade Co Ltd, owner of an industrial line for crab feeding and processing. His processed crab meat is exported from the island to several overseas countries and regions, including Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
To raise the quality of his frozen meat, Huang is preparing 2 million yuan (US$246,000) to 3 million yuan to introduce an automatic river-crab-meat processing line. His factory currently makes minced meat by hand.
Huang said if the processing line is completed in a couple of years, he will have a larger market with his exclusive technology.
Chongming county is rich in river crabs, but it was not until the early 1990s that its residents found feeding crabs could lead to well-off lives.
In 1993, Huang borrowed 600,000 yuan from his relatives and worked with a vice manager from an aquatic company in Hubei Province and a businessman from Wenzhou city to explore a seven-hectare pool, a considerable coverage at that time in the county, to feed crabs.
Huang ignored many of his relatives' questions about how a former electric-wire salesman could manage such a large aqua-farm.
Fortunately, Huang broke even at the end of his first crab-feeding year. But problems arose among the three partners as each of them could see a huge potential crab-feeding market and wanted to expand their shares in the business.
At last, the three men divided the aqua-farm and Huang got 2.33 hectares. Since the division in 1994, Huang has started his own business and expanded his aqua-farm from the 2.33-hectare-pool in the county to about 70,000-hectares in Anhui, Jiangsu, Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces.
His first brave step traced back to 2000 when the margin from crab feeding shrunk because of depreciation in the crab market.
Huang decided to explore a massive crab feeding aqua-farm to reduce the effect of the low crab prices and dug his first out-of-county crab feeding pool in Anhui Province under the suggestion of his friend.
Despite the arguments on whether it is safe to raise crabs outside the island from local residents, Huang just raised his package and had lived in a boat for months on the province's Nushan Lake in Mingguang Temple.
The lucky man was rewarded after the tedious work and his exploration out of his hometown was a success.
"If I failed at the beginning I may not have the courage to keep on, but thank goodness, I am so lucky," said Huang.
But fortune is not for everyone. Huang won his luck from his bravery and his sharp sense of public relations.
"When people start aqua-farm business outside their hometowns, friends are key to their success. They can help people solve problems concerning safety and familiarity," said Huang.
From his friends, Huang recognized many government officials who can protect his aqua-farms from robberies.
Now, Huang needn't stay in boats for months, but only pays three to four visits lingering three to four days to make sure his crab business goes right.
However, his ambition is not only confined in selling crabs, he wants to open more markets, a steady high-end market which is seldom affected by natural disasters.
"I need to buy some machines to process the crab meat and sell it to big hotels and supermarkets," said Huang.
"The frozen crab meat market is blank in the country as nobody has ever tried the technology."
Huang is now in talks with many frozen food companies and food institutes to deal with the processing machine issue.