Back at home, my grandma and aunt would spend hours assembling the wontons together and then simmering them in pork-bone broth for dinner, for everyone at the dinner table.Īnd consequently eating Chinese dumplings is often a meal where you share. When dumplings were on the menu for extended-family dinners at home, one of us would go down to the slippery wet market, precariously queue up and buy pork mince and ready-made wonton ( wàhn tān/yún tūn, 云吞) wrappers there. My Chinese-Malaysian family in Malaysia were never up for making dumplings from scratch, though. There’s always a story behind each dumpling, where it’s from and how it’s made. It takes time to knead dumpling dough, mince filling and wrap flattened dough around measured quantities of filling – all made by hand amidst gossiping with each other to pass the time making a meal of dumplings. Togetherness and the notion of family are virtues in Asian cultures. While today the paper currency is no longer used, ingots are still commonly used as ancestral offerings, continuing revered tradition in Chinese culture.įor many Chinese, part of the fun that comes with eating dumplings is making and plating them up together. Eat dumplings, eat your way to riches and an affluent new beginning. Also, breaking down the name jiǎo zi: jiǎo translates to “crossing” and zi the time between 11pm and 1am. During the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1279AD), jiǎo zi was a form of paper currency. Dumplings like the jiǎo zi and yellow-skinned siu mai personify good financial fortune, metaphorically reminiscent of gold and silver ingots that were used as currency in ancient China. To many typical traditional Chinese, eating dumplings is eating a meal worth in gold, literally. We ate them for so long and they made our family yum chas back then assuredly complete. We’d order dumplings like gao choi gao/jiǔ cài jiǎo (韭菜饺, shrimp-chives), har gao/xiā jiǎ (虾饺,shrimp), siu mai/shāo mài (烧卖, shrimp-pork with yellow skins) and chiu chou fun guo/cháo zhōu fěn guǒ (潮州粉果, pork-shrimp) – must-orders. Growing up in Malaysia, during Chinese New Year festivities in Malaysia, me and the extended Cantonese-speaking family always had yum cha breakfasts and lunches. Eat dumplings, eat harmony and prosperity. These dumplings are each shaped like a (crescent) moon with rugged patterns across their skins and edges in Chinese culture the moon is symbolic of promising abundance and brightness. In China, jiǎo zi (饺子) are eaten during the Spring Festival to usher in the Lunar New Year, marking new beginnings. But different dumplings have different origins, and each of us has our own reasons for eating dumplings.įor many Chinese, eating Chinese dumplings is a kind of superstition, a celebratory occasion where we feel hope, peace and a sense of completeness. They are often thought of as an easy, simple meal. Dumplings can be loosely thought of as ‘small pieces of dough…often wrapped around a filling’, either sweet or savoury, steamed, fried or boiled. All over the world, there are dumplings of all shapes, sizes and fillings. There are so many reasons why we like eating dumplings.ĭefining ‘dumpling’ can be tricky.
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