Instead, I saved the tearing up for when Htan Dah put another bowl of stick soup in front of me now and asked, "How long are you staying?"

Wujiang Lu, the city's famous snack street – where octopus could be had on a stick alongside Shanghai's beloved soup dumplings – is to be sanitised and redeveloped.

Food there is basically cooked, like a tasty yellow croaker soup, Fried shrimps on a stick, grilled squid and so on.