In almost every Zhuanghe home, one dish is sure to appear: hacha scrambled with eggs — golden egg wrapping tender white clam meat, fragrant and savoury over a bowl of rice. Hacha, the yellow clam of the Yellow Sea’s tidal flats, is the town’s signature shellfish. Gathered at low tide by hand with small hooks — old hands read the tiny holes and ripples in the sand — it turns up in classic stir-fries, milky clam-and-tofu soup and dried form for winter. Visitors now come to try ‘small tide harvesting’ themselves, digging a bucketful and having it cooked on the spot. On the list of Zhuanghe’s sea flavours, hacha holds a firm place.