Don't leave freshness to chance when it comes to selecting fish for the dinner table. Following are some pointers to keep in mind:

• If you have up-close access to the fish, smell it. You shouldn't be able to smell much more than a pleasant, salty-marine aroma. If you do detect a "fishy" smell reminiscent of ammonia, choose another fish. Moreover, if that unpleasant odor pervades the entire fish market, definitely find somewhere else to buy your fish.
• If the fish at your market look obviously out of date, it definitely indicates that they have passed their prime. Don't buy fish with any of the following signs: cloudy eyes, gills that have turned from deep red to a dull pink or brown, flesh that's dark and bruised, ragged fins, or scales with a distinctive slimy sheen. As for fillets, if they've begun to curl or appear dried out along the edges, don't waste your money on them either.
• Fish that are frozen via high-tech flash-freezing (known as IQF, or individual quick frozen) often retain as high a quality as very fresh fish. If you have to pick between iffy "fresh" and quality frozen, then choose the latter any day. You can keep a stash of frozen fish on hand (it'll keep for a few months in a subzero-degree freezer) for whenever a fish fancy strikes you. Just remember to keep it fully frozen until ready to use, at which point you'll want to defrost it in the refrigerator.

Fish has long held an auspicious position not only in the Chinese kitchen but also in Chinese culture. The Chinese word for fish, yu, is a homonym for another yu, meaning abundance or prosperity. Always in tune with symbolism, the Chinese have thus associated fish with luck and success.