The guesthouse owner, having volunteered to work as our tour guide, said the island had been settled as far back as the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234). In centuries past it had been named after the wolfberry shrubs on the island, but these have since been displaced by houses made of stone. However, I barely had any patience to digest this fact because at that moment my stomach was crying out for food, egged on by a display board we passed that vaunted the local seafood restaurants. So forget wolfberries and think rather of wolves that have not eaten for days.

We dropped off our belongings at the guesthouse before the owner brought the first dish, a seafood mixed platter. Having spent the past few hours eyeing the scenic beauty of the sea, we would now let our mouths delight in its exquisite flavors. Anyone who has seen a bunch of seagulls on a beach trying to outdo one another to get their beaks onto a tasty morsel will appreciate that someone as mild mannered as me was going to come off second best in this food fight. The next rounds produced the same result, and I was left to complain later about how unfair it was that I could snag only a bite or two.