"I wasn't scared, I was just worried about how my family would react," Li says.
Back in Pingtan, Li's father was beginning to worry about him because he hadn't heard from his son since he left two days before. Then the phone rang -- a friend told him that his son had been kidnapped.
The senior Li fainted. He heard rumors that his son would be shot in two days' time.
But they were lucky.
After a flurry of activity between Chinese diplomats and the Iraqi government, the group was released after just 36 hours.
Despite their ordeal, Xue and Li told Chinese diplomats that they wanted to stay in Baghdad and find work. After all, they had paid huge sums of money to travel there.
"The financial burdens of my family was on my mind. I hadn't had the opportunity to find work yet and there were the mounting debts," Xue says.
Like Xue, Li's desperation for work outweighed any trauma he might have had. "What's the point of going home? There was nothing to do. I'd be driving my motorbike again, earning that 20, 30 yuan a day," Li sighs.
They stayed at the embassy for a week, before finally being pressured to return to China.
The fishermen were unaware of the intense press coverage over their kidnapping at home. Told by the government to stay low-profile, they were whisked back to Pingtan quickly after their arrival.
Back in their village, nothing had changed. Except that their hopes for work had been dashed, and their debts had piled even higher. They lost the few thousand yuan they had carried with them to Iraq, plus the money paid to the agents. And since their return, authorities have confiscated their passports as a warning.
But in spite of their experience, both Xue and Li say they still want to find work abroad.
"If there is another opportunity, I still want to go abroad again," Li says. "On Pingtan Island, if you don't go abroad you starve. So many people are still unemployed."
But he wouldn't recommend Iraq to anyone, although the torn-apart nation, as the cheapest option, seems to be the only choice for villagers.
Nine months later, another eight people from villages near Xue and Li's home were kidnapped in Iraq as they made their way to Jordan after completing a construction project.
Kidnappers threatened to kill them but, like Xue and Li, they were released a few days later.
When asked whether the two kidnappings had shattered villagers' dreams of earning money abroad, 22-year-old Li Mao, another young man struggling to make ends meet, says no.
"Of course I want to go, what is there to do in Pingtan? Just go somewhere where there is no war," the part-time decorator says, standing idly by the front door of his family's house, looking at the sea.
"But then I don't have any money," he says, with a rueful smile.
"There is no future here, if there is a future why would people want to run away?" he asks.
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