Do northern Chinese folks like Shanghainese eat much seafood?!

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Shanghai is considered southern part of China. Or, are you talking about Shenyang, China?

If you're talking about Shanghai, they do eat quite a bit of seafoods. Here are some famous Shanghai seafood dishes:
1) One of the most famous seafoods around that area is mitten crabs. Those were usually steamed.
2) Shanghai sauteed freshwater eels. As the name implied, it was sauteed. In many restaurants, the server will either pour hot oil on top of the dish or pour the whole dish onto a hot iron plate at table side; there'll be lot's of sizzles followed by a sudden release of aroma. http://www.foodnut.com/i/Shanghai-Restau…
3) Shanghai "smoked" fish is a popular dish too. Ironically, those fish were usually deep fried and braised instead. http://www.foodnut.com/i/Fu1039-Shanghai…
4) Shanghai braised fish. The fish tail portion is probably the most well known cut.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_98OT1kaQdqU/SpC6kI…
5) Braised sea cucumber with shrimp roe.
http://www.cynicallyoptimistic.com/blog/…
6) Crab meat and pork xiao-long-bao aka steamed Shanghai soup dumplings/buns.

A lot of those foods looked as if it contained the same dark, starchy sauce. All foods above got a distinctive taste and nice restaurants do not use starch on those dishes. The starchy effect was achieved by reducing sauce containing brown sugar or rock sugar. Other seafoods like sauteed freshwater shrimp, fish stew, various stir-fried clams, stir-fried snails, poached clams, poached snails, and stir-fried squid dishes are all very common but not as famous. Drunken prawns and drunken crabs are popular among locals. Those were eaten raw; drunken shrimps were sometimes eaten alive. http://www.pc2paper.org/content/binary/W…

People in Shenyang, China eat lots of seafoods too. One of the most common seafood dishes is boiled dumplings with fish fillings. Those are very easy to find. Boiled dumplings containing shrimp is also common. If you could handle large amounts of chives, then you should try boiled dumplings with shrimp, pork and chive fillings. Stir-fried dishes containing squid are also very common. There is a crab that's got a different texture and aroma; it tasted much better than crab species found in North America. Those were usually steamed. I've seen quite a few dishes containing conch around that area too. They were steam, poached, stir-fried and braised. That spicy stir-fried shell in whole conch is really good. Here are some northern Chinese seafood restaurant items:

1) Braised abalone.
2) Steamed scallops on half shell.
3) Poached mantis shrimp.
4) Braised sea cucumber.
5) Stir-fried clams or various species.
6) Poached conch.
7) Steamed crabs.
8) Braised jumbo prawns. (Their jumbo prawns are about the size of small lobsters!)
9) Steamed sea urchin in shell with egg.
10) Mixed jelly fish.

Before I went there, I was told that people in northern parts of China do not eat that much seafood. Well, it is true that they don't eat that much seafoods on a daily basis. Their other dishes seemed to be more popular than their seafood dishes. But there is no shortage of seafood dishes there. A lot of foods eaten in Shenyang are either Shandong cuisine (one of the 8 major cuisines in China) or highly influenced by Shandong cuisine. A very good portion of Shandong was surrounded by sea.

Chinese do consume seafood. But you probably hate this, they eat "shark fins". The availability of seafood based on their locations if they live far away from the sea prices do go higher. That's why they call it a delicacy. But yes Shanghai is close to Beijing which is a capital city so prices are relatively higher.

Consider Japanese food, its basically made from seafood because they live by the sea.

Thaiguy

Shanghai is not in the northern part of China, it's in the East. It's a coastal town, so they eat a lot of seafood.

Here you'll see that a quite high percentage of their recipes are made of seafood:
http://shanghai.cultural-china.com/html/…

Oh, geographically South, but in all the cooking books I saw Shanghai was always classified in the Eastern Chinese cooking sections.

Shanghai is considered south, the line between North and South is in the Qinling mountains between Shandong province and Jiangsu province. Shanghainese will eat a lot of seafood because it is considered to be a port town. It is on the coast.