As you walk through the city streets, you can glut your senses and satisfy your palate with the smells and tastes of regional dishes from all over the country.

With its exotic cuisine, beautiful restaurants, cosmopolitan atmosphere and quality service, Shanghai's a haven for everyone who craves variety and excitement on their plate.

We'll be sampling a small part of city's variety in today's program, bypassing the main courses to head straight for the city's snacks.
Shanghai has hundreds of snack foods and you would have to invest weeks ¨C if not months ¨C plus a few extra pounds around the waist to get to know them all.

So today we're going to explore just a small ¨C but famous ¨C corner of Shanghai's snack universe.

The Chenghuang Temple Market is known as the place to go if you want to sample authentic Shanghai food.

The first stop is a shop that sells Nanxiang Steamed Dumplings, called Nanxiang Man Tou by the locals.

This traditional snack is famous across the world.

Legend has it Queen Elizabeth II specifically ordered Nanxiang Steamed Dumplings when she visited the city a few years ago.

These dumplings are very different from the JiaoZi Chinese people traditionally eat during the Spring Festival.

They're made with a thin skin of dough and filled with gravy or soup, giving them their other name - "tangbao" - or soup dumpling.

They come stuffed with anything from minced pork to crab or shrimp, though different combinations are often equally as good.

When you bit into the dumpling, delicious smelling gravy flows out, making Nanxiang Steamed Dumpling a flavorsome treat that's impossible to resist.

From experience, you are strongly suggested that you avoid swallowing the first bite with caution.

Take just a nibble on the thin skin and let the juices cool before biting into the treat or risk burning your tongue on the boiling soup inside.

Dipping the dumpling in vinegar will also cool it down to a reasonable temperature as well as improve the flavor.