Perhaps you’ve been there: gone to dim sum with a local, maybe in your first months in Hong Kong. Enjoyed the delights of Cantonese cuisine served in bite-sized portions. Left the ordering up to your friend, because you know this is a modern city; nothing too horrible on the menu. And so far it’s been great: little shrimp and pork pockets of joy; sweet custard pastry; savoury rice rolls; all dipped in deliciously bitter soy vinegar and washed down with fragrant tea.

Then a dish arrives on the table. It looks skeletal, soaked in oil and spice until it seems the flesh will roll away. You take a bite – a nibble – and you realise there is no flesh, just tasty, rubbery-soft flavour and sinewy tendon around a bony core.

“What the heck’s this?” you blurt, your eyes signalling your feeling of betrayal. Your friend seems not your friend…