Paper-thin slices of raw fish fan out across a round table in Shunde, and everyone reaches in at once, tossing them with ginger, lime leaf and roasted peanuts and peanut oil. Dessert is double-skin milk, a wobbly custard made from buffalo milk, and the talk carries on long after the bowls are scraped clean.
Away from the table, lion dancers leap across the courtyard of the Ancestral Temple, and the old dragon kiln in Shiwan still fires pottery on its hillside. Summers are long, hot and humid with heavy rain, while winters stay mild and mostly dry. A Local Friend can bring you into their own corner of Foshan, down to the lane where everyone gathers after dark.
