If you want seafood, Dalian offers a fine kettle of fish

Seafood and dumplings.

Those are what Simon Wang, a food and beverage manager, misses most whenever he is away from Dalian, Liaoning, his native city.

Unlike many Cantonese seafood dishes, fish and shellfish, however fresh, are usually served with tangy sauces. Fresh and dried chilli peppers are sometimes used, but sparingly; the tanginess comes from vinegar and sometimes ginger.

Dalian has the Yellow Sea on one side and Bohai Sea on the other. Its waters are relatively clean, allowing abalone and oyster to thrive, along with an abundance of other edible marine life. Some fish - such as the small soft-fleshed yellow croaker, the flat, elongated hairtail and a snapper-like species with no English name - are almost exclusively local to Dalian and its environs.

Markets display all these, as well as mussels and a large variety of crabs, prawns and shellfish - from the most minute to enormous whelks, and large sea urchins. Dalian Number 38 Market, near several hotels in Zhongshan district, also sells live hollow sea worms, popular in local cuisine for only about three years - and lots of dried seafood, fresh fruit and vegetables.

At Star Seafood Restaurant around Xinghai Square, crisp fried crab with a seasoned batter, is outstanding. More typical are steamed clams, in a deluge of dark soy and sugar sauce with dry chilli. Here, the sea worms are called 'sea intestines' and served with spring onion in a mild soya-based sauce. The snapper-like fish comes braised, with a sauce that gets its light brown colour from fermented soya bean. Its taste is subtle and toned down with sugar.