The rafts are quite steady in the water.

Zhou Hongyu, a photographer from Liaoning province, is taking her first sheepskin raft ride.

"It is a little shaky, but the raft feels really stable and nothing gets wet," she says, with some excitement.

Hu is 48 years old and has been in the trade for more than 20 years, following the footsteps of his father and grandfather.

There is little overhead cost, but the work depends very much on fair weather.

Boatmen start work from May to October each year, with peak seasons in July and August.

During the cold months, boatmen take time off to repair and make new sheepskin bags for their rafts.

Each ferry operator can make 4,000 yuan per month during peak seasons. And during spring and at year's end, there are barely any tourists, so they have to make enough money during the busiest months.

But this year, he says, due to the flooding of the river, they were prohibited from running the rafts for a few weeks.

It takes a lot of work and care to repair and maintain the rafts regularly.

Hu says that if treated carefully, one sheepskin bag can be used for three to four years. Otherwise, they have to be replaced in a year.

Every day the boatmen will take each sheepskin raft out of the water and dry it in the sun. Before putting the rafts back into water, they have to blow into the sheepskin bags to make sure every one is ready for use.

Every month, the rafters also prepare a mixture of salt water and linseed oil to moisturize the insides of the sheepskin bags. They use about 500 grams of the mixture per bag. But each year, they have to prepare at least 50 new sheepskin bags ready for use.

Zhang Debao has been in the business for more than 40 years and he says it is really hard to find any successors for the future.

"Many elders in this industry have passed on and young people nowadays are not willing to pick up this skill because it is smelly and filthy when making sheepskin bags," he says. "The skill may be lost after our generation."

He says the smell of sheepskin is like "rotten meat" during the shaving process. And the daily maintenance work is another headache for beginners.

"Few are willing to put their mouths on a smelly sheepskin bag," Zhang says.

In his family of two brothers, Hu is the only one who took over the business from his father. Hu says that after their fathers passed away, he and Zhang now run their business together — and are also the only ones who can still make the sheepskin bags.

He has two daughters, and Zhang has one son. But none of their children are willing to learn because of the nature of the job, also because it does not pay well.

"I am almost 50 years old and can work for another 10 years at most," says Hu. "Though it is hard, we are still hoping to look for apprentices." And for the two raftsmen, the search goes on.

Contact the writer at linjingcd@chinadaily.com.cn