There were many small diners here, catering to those at the bottom of society, such as the tugmen, porters, fishermen who came to sell fish, and so on. The so-called "small profit, high turnover" was the reason for their good business.
The staple food was coarse grain steamed buns; better ones would include millet and millet rice. As for vegetables, stir-fried dishes were scarce, mostly a hodgepodge stew—not particularly tasty, but just enough to fill one's stomach.
As for noodles and rice, they were almost never seen except in specialty dessert shops and restaurants. Otherwise, you'd be hard-pressed to find them.
Hence, these grains weren't cheap to sell here. If nearby towns and villages grew them, they could fetch a good price. However, the fishermen had little land to begin with, and after paying taxes on what they harvested, there was scarcely enough left to scrape by, let alone to sell.
