The Chinese have not had a long history of treating shark fins as a valuable delicacy, starting around the Ming Dynasty. Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" said sharks "have fins under their bellies, which are tasty and fat, and are prized by the southerners", which means shark fins were only prized by the southerners at that time.

In fact, the shark's fin itself does not have any flavor, but also slightly fishy, shark's fin soup is delicious mainly from its ingredients, with ham, old chicken and other really delicious boiled out. Therefore, shark's fin is very easy to fake, there are fake shark's fins imitated by gelatin, sodium alginate, calcium chloride and other materials in the market, and it is said that the quality is very similar to the real shark's fin after rehydration, and you can't eat the difference. It can be seen that shark's fin is not an irreplaceable delicacy.