3 days in Shantou/Swatow (汕頭）

I have to go to my dad's home town to reconfirm the details of Dad's funeral in Early August. Dad's ash has traveled with me back to Hong Kong last year. I promised dad I am going to take him back to his homedown. Hence, we planed a 3 day trip to Shangtou, which is only 156 km away from Meizhou. The high speed railway in China is pretty easy to take. Shangtou is the trading port for a few hundred years, it has developed a special food culture. It is also close to the sea, seafoods are the important source of protein. Locals pays special attentions to the freshness and umami taste of fishes and prawns. The most straightforward way is to marinate the fresh seafood in raw garlic, soy sauce and chillies. Any seafood you can imagine can be put into the marinate, clams, prawns, cray fishes, crabs. The marinated meats are transparent and juicy. Unlike the shashimi type of raw fish, it doesn't require aging to tenderize the fiberous connective tissues and to concentrate the flavour, it is purely the freshness of the seafood. Of course you taste the soy sauce and condiments at the beginning, but at the end, the more you chew, the more of the sweetness and seafood taste appear. Marinated seafood is one thing, there is another type of raw fish which is just fresh water fish, thin sliced up and mixed with finely chopped lemon leave, ginger, corianders, thin-sliced garlic and pickled radish. Suprisingly you can still taste the fish at the end. In lots of south east China provinces, eating beef is normally frown upon because of the farming culture (cattles are the main source of the prowing power in farming) and religion. Not in Shangtou. Shangtou developed this beef hotpot culture to the extreme. First of all, the beef was extremely fresh, some shops proud themselves by having meat delivered from the slaughter house to your table within 4 hours. Secondly, Shangtou chef cut away or select the best part of the beef, such that the meat are tender and juicy after 2-3 seconds in the light broth. They are so confident the meat can be so tender that they even cut the meat slice with the grain rather than against it. You can almost just eat the meat without any saurce. Apart from the famous beef hotpot and raw marinated, there are so many different other choices for breakfasts and lunches. Fresh pig entrails to make the soup in the morning, steam rice rolls for lunch. It is not a problem to eat non-stop for 3 days in Shangtou.