Ever since the commencement of hostilities between the Chinese and Japanese in the Shanghai area nearly a year ago it has been very difficult to get good fresh fish here. The reason for this, of course, is that the native fishermen who used Woosung at the mouth of the Whangpoo River as a base have been unable to operate on account of the war situation. and only a limited number of fishing junks have been able to ascend the Whangpoo to discharge their catches made in the Yangtsze Estuary and neighbouring sea in Shanghai itself. The regular supplies of sea fish caught off the Chekiang coast and shipped by steamer to the Shanghai market from Ningpo have also been seriously interfered and what has happened to the big fish market and cold storage plant established a couple of years ago in the Yangtszepoo area by the former City Government of Greater Shanghai no one seems to know. My thoughts have been turned upon the subject of Shanghai's fish supply in the first place by the fact that I am getting very tired of only bacon and eggs, kidneys and what not for breakfast and long for a bit of fresh fish, and in the second place by the receipt of an excellent little book by Professor G. A. C. Herklots and S. Y. Lin of Hongkong University entitled "Common Marine Food-fishes of Hongkong" illustrated with pictures of these finny products of the ocean that makes one's epicurean mouth water. How one would enjoy a good cod steak or a fried dory-snapper for breakfast! This useful publication describes in English and Chinese some fifty species of food-fish obtainable in Hongkong, giving an illustration of each species and its scientific, popular English and Chinese names, as well as a series of European and Chinese recipes for cooking fish. This is the kind of book needed in Shanghai, where, I have noticed, foreign housekeepers and restauranteurs, especially British and American, seem to have no idea of the many delectable kinds of fish to be purchased in the local markets in normal times, and serve one with but a few well known kinds, such as _wang-yn, white-bait (so-called) Mandarin fish, samh and Ningpo sole, till one gets to loathe the very sight and smell of them. They do not seem to realize that excellent flounder and mackerel are to be had, as well as pomfret, sea bass, various
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.