What's 'lobstah' in Chinese?

Ylan Q. Mui has an article in The Washington Post about Maine and China:

The long journey from the remote Little Cranberry Island of free-spirited Maine fishermen to the most populous country in the world began, as it does most mornings, at just about sunrise. Bruce Fernald, a sixth-generation fisherman, loaded his forty-foot fiberglass boat with half a ton of bait and set out in search of Maine’s famed crustacean: the lobster.
One by one, Fernald checked the eight hundred traps he had placed along thirty square miles at the bottom of the Gulf of Maine. He quickly hauled each wire cage onto his boat, reached a gloved hand inside and plucked out the lobster lurking within. The young ones, the breeders, and the crusty old ones were thrown back into the water. The rest were dropped into a saltwater tank to keep them alive and energetic on their seven-thousand-mile trip to China.
“Just do everything you can to not stress them out,” Fernald, 64, said of his cargo. “The less stressed they are, the more healthy they’ll be, just like people.”
Little Cranberry, an island of seventy inhabitants, and China, a nation of over a billion people, increasingly find themselves connected by the shifting currents of the world economy. The rise of China’s middle class has coincided with a boom in Maine’s lobster population, resulting in a voracious new market for the crustaceans’ succulent, sweet meat. Exports of lobsters to China, nonexistent a decade ago, totaled twenty million dollars last year. The bright red color of a lobster’s cooked shell is considered auspicious, making it a staple during Chinese festivals and at weddings.
The lobster’s tale is a testament to the complexities of the global marketplace, and a reminder that the line between economic winners and losers is not always clear. China has played the villain from Wall Street to the presidential campaign trail, blamed for plunging stock markets, the downfall of developing nations, and the disappearance of blue-collar jobs, including in Maine, where the closure of lumber and pulp factories have left thousands of workers unemployed.
Yet the reality is more nuanced. Even as foreign competition has devastated parts of the American economy, China ranks among the biggest international customers for a vast array of other industries, from ginseng to airplanes to pork. Maine lobsters are just a tiny sliver of the hundred billion dollars in annual exports to China, a figure that has nearly tripled in the past decade.
“China is undergoing an economic transition,” said Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group. “It’s this new buying class that’s changing trade patterns throughout the world.”
Maine is still testing the potential and the limits of that relationship. The state is hoping that deeper ties to the Chinese can help boost ailing industries, but they could also make the state vulnerable to a far-off, and unpredictable, source of customers.
Out here on the water, the forecast is sunny. Amid the roar of the boat’s engine and the blustery wind, Fernald said his philosophy is simple: “My father always said, ‘Keep hauling, and you’ll get a day’s pay,’ ” he recalled. “Most of the time, that’s true.”
There’s no escaping the lobsters at Fernald’s home on this island, where his family has lived since 1850. A brass lobster decorates the front door. A metal lobster graces the front yard. His collection of baseball caps hangs on lobster hooks. Even his butter dish is shaped like a lobster. Fernald has been fishing since he got out of the Navy, more than four decades ago, one of three siblings to follow in his father’s rubber boots. In his workshop, Fernald keeps wooden buoys painted by generations of lobstermen before him.
Although the techniques for trapping lobsters haven’t changed much since, the industry itself is in the midst of transformation. For the first time in decades, Maine is facing a glut of lobsters. When Fernald’s father was working these waters, Maine’s lobstermen pulled in roughly twenty million pounds a year. But, since 2012, landings have topped a hundred and twenty million pounds. Explanations for the population boom range from climate change to the overfishing of cod, the crustacean’s natural predator, but the statistics are irrefutable: The state has more lobsters than it can handle.
The record catch in 2012 caught the industry by surprise, sending prices falling to the lowest level in almost twenty years. Lobstermen averaged just $2.69 per pound of lobster, barely covering the cost of going out on the water for many. The businesses that buy and sell the crustaceans say they did not fare much better. The sheer volume helped make up for the decline in price, but the margins grew scarily thin.
“We bought a ton of lobsters and made absolutely nothing off it,” said Aaron Bernstein, who manages the dock from which Fernald and the other fishermen on Little Cranberry ship their catch. “It was a very difficult season.”
Maine faced a potential crisis. The Pine Tree state already had suffered the decline of its traditional manufacturing industries, lumber and paper, victims of advances in technology and foreign competition. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute estimated that cheap exports of Chinese goods cost Maine twelve thousand jobs, or nearly two percent of total state employment, between 2001 and 2013. The lobster industry could not be allowed to implode as well.
The solution state officials came up with seemed to come straight from an economics textbook: When supply is too high, increase demand; in other words, get more people to eat lobster. And nowhere are there more people than in China.
The first Maine trade delegation arrived in Hong Kong at the end of 2013. Since then, the state has established a full-time development office in Shanghai and led a second trade mission to the city last year. Last fall, officials finagled lobsters onto the menu during the White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. The lucky red crustaceans were featured as the second course, poached in butter and served alongside traditional rice noodle rolls.
It was a coup for a state that lacks name recognition in China. In fact, Maine lobsters are often called Boston lobsters overseas, since they are shipped from Boston's Logan Airport.
“Most of the time when we go to Asia, people don’t even know where Maine is,” said Janine Bisaillon-Cary, who heads the Maine International Trade Center. Her pitch typically begins with geography, but quickly moves on to the state’s pristine waters and crisp air, its strict seafood conservation efforts and outdoorsy culture, selling points intended to appeal to a country plagued by pollution. Experts say well-off Chinese consumers have moved beyond collecting luxury goods such as designer handbags to coveting luxurious experiences. Their palettes now demand beef from Australia, honey from New Zealand, wines from Chile and lobsters from Maine, preferably alive, so that chefs and diners can select the feistiest ones to feast on.
At the five-star Conrad Hotel in Beijing, chef Mirko Sun dishes up lobster porridge, lobster bisque with garlic croutons, and a lobster salad with fresh herbs. The crustacean sells for roughly forty dollars a pound, about a quarter of the average urban worker’s weekly income. “For most Chinese people, eating lobster is about face,” Sun said. “Mostly people only order it to treat important guests.”

Rico says it's yet another 'whoda thunk it' situation...