Taicang Tourism Festival is held annually in spring in the city of Taicang, Jiangsu province – a city on the Yangtze River estuary just a stone's throw away from urban metropolis of Shanghai.

This year's festival offers a chance to experience the cultural delights and culinary delicacies of Taicang and kicked off with a grand ceremony by Tianjing Lake, one of the best preserved natural sights in the city, on March 12.

Tianjing Lake in Taicang, Jiangsu province. [Photo from WeChat account tcfbwx]

A variety of events will take place during the months-long festival, including the Taicang Seafood Festival, where renowned seafood chefs will gather to plate up the best aquatic life the area has to offer. The seafood festival will run from March 12 to May 30. For a taste of traditional dishes and snacks, check out the food trade show at Haiyundi, a riverside commercial project, where a variety of food vendors will be setting up shops.

Epicures, chefs and non-vocational cooking masters will gather in Taicang for a cooking contest featuring aquatic delicacies. Exquisite dishes made by ancient cooking techniques will be presented at the event. [Photo from WeChat account tcfbwx]

Taicang's seafood dishes are known for their freshness and the date of this year's festival has been brought forward to allow visitors to sample the tastiest saury – a long, slender migratory fish considered one of the three delicacies of the Yangtze River.

Saury fish is considered one of the three delicacies of the Yangtze River. [Photo from WeChat account tcfbwx]

The fish migrate from the sea to the Yangtze River every spring and taste best if caught at this time of the year, since they have been in freshwater long enough to exhaust some of the salt content from their bodies and absorb freshwater nutrients.

Top chefs, cooking masters and those with a voluptuous taste for mouthwatering dishes will gather over the coming months to take part in cooking contests and demonstrate ancient cooking techniques.