A view of Taotou village in Sanmen county, Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/taizhou.com.cn]

Autumn is the best season to eat crabs, as they are most fertile during this period, and the blue crabs from Sanmen county in Taizhou are particularly popular.

In June, these crabs were listed as a geographical indication product by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

The brand value of Sanmen blue crabs has reached 4.66 billion yuan ($716.9 million).

The county has even rented some land in countries including Malaysia and Mozambique to farm blue crabs.

In 2016, Taotou village from Sanmen rented tidal flats spanning 3,000 mu (200 hectares) in total in the state of Selangor in Malaysia.

A year later, the first batch of blue crabs from the farm hit the market in Malaysia, with a price of 140 yuan per kilogram. In 2019, the price increased to 160 yuan per kilogram, according to the village's Party chief Lin Houyi.

In 2018, 30,000 juvenile crabs were also shipped from Taotou to a rented farm in Mozambique.

Taotou village exemplifies the saying that out of the depths of misfortune comes bliss.

In August 1997, Sanmen was hit by a typhoon that was believed to have been the strongest in 220 years.

Taotou village was driven to an impasse after the typhoon, as the salinity of more than 260 hectares of fields in the village increased by over 10 percent after being immersed in seawater for more than 40 days. This meant that no crops could be grown on the land for at least three years.

As a result, local villagers were forced to get involved in aquaculture. In the first year after the typhoon, the output of the aquaculture sector in Taotou exceeded 6 million yuan, more than 10 times the amount local farmers used to earn from crop farming.