1,000 fishing boats, 500 seafood dishes

Waitresses at restaurants in Xiangshan preparing crabs for sale.[Photo by Yang Zhonghua/China Daily]

"Unlike the seafood street restaurants in Shanghai which are always filled with people, sitting in the yard of a fisherman's family, feeling the breeze from the sea and eating fresh seafood are what I call seizing the day," he said.

After visiting Xiangshan more than five times, Xi no longer seeks seafood dishes at expensive restaurants but prefers to go to the seafood market and buy directly from fishermen and then hire owners of guesthouses to cook it.

"For newcomers to Xiangshan, big restaurants definitely must be the first choice. For frequent visitors like me, purchasing directly at Shipu port is more interesting and economic," he said.

Xi also likes to look for secret food stalls hidden in the old town of Shipu, where many of the buildings are hundreds of years old and convey the atmosphere of ancient China.

Delicious food is often to be found behind the wooden doors of the houses.

Xi said that an 80-year-old woman opens her small breakfast stall in the old town every morning. She offers simple seafood noodles, where noodles boiled with chicken soup and cabbage are put in a porcelain bowl, which is then filled with shrimp, shellfish, cuttlefish rings and other seafood.

"Add some drops of local vinegar into the soup, and the whole day will be lightened up by the noodle," Xi said.

Such seafood noodles are not hard to find in Xiangshan. The seafood added to the noodles may differ from place to place but the sweet fresh flavor of the noodles is the same.

At night, younger visitors gravitate to the China Fishery Village beach, where people gather around bonfires, listen to the sound of the sea and enjoy a delicious barbecue. The night air is often filled with singing, laughter and the sounds of people having a good time.