What is the legendary story about dumplings？
3 min readDumplings are very traditional food in China.Northern Chinese people call the dumplings jiao zi，while Southern Chinese people prefer to call them hun tun or won ton .Dumplings may be stuffed with a variety of food，including pork，mutton，beef and fish.
There are several stories concerning the origin of dumplings.According to one version，the dumpling was invented by Zhang Zhongjing ，a wel1-known herba medical doctor of the Eastern Han Dynasty who wrote the book Treatise on Febrile Diseases and Miscellaneous Diseases（《hanshangzabinglun》）.
Once Zhang retired from his government affairs service and returned to his hometown，he found that in winter many local people had painful chilblains on theear.Zhang realized that his clinic was so small that it couldn’t accommodate theincreasing number of chilblain patients，so he asked his brother to put up a tent and place a cauldron in the village square.When the winter solstice arrived，Zhang started to offer medicinal herbs to chilblain patients.
His medicine was called quhan jiao’er tang（herbal soup to dispel the cold and protect the ears）.It consisted of mutton，red spicy peppers，and other necessary medicinal herbs.Zhang soaked them completely in water and heated them in the cauldron over a fire until the water boiled.Zhang then took all thethings out of the cauldron，mincing them into stuffing.His assistants rolled out dough into each small pancake.They put the stuffing in the centre of the pancakes and wrapped them in the shape of the ear.These tiny things were named jiao’er or”the ear protection，”and were then all dropped into the herb soup to cook.
Zhang offered each patient a bowl of the soup and two jiao’er dumplings.The patients drank the soup and ate the dumplings and soon their whole body got so warm，including their ears
For the following days，they continued eating dumplings and drinking soup，and their ear chilblains gradually disappeared.Zhang kept offering the soup and jiao’er dumplings until New Year’s Eve.On the New Year’s Day，local people all made dumplings as a symbol to celebrate New Year’s Day and to rejoice over their recovery from the chilblains.This event turned into a tradition that has lasted until today.
Do you know the legendary story about wowotou？
Wowotou（steamed corn bread）is made with corn flour or corn and bean flour.Steamed corn bread has a solid body and a round，flat base that gradually becomes narrower toward the top.The centre of the base is curved inward，allowing steam to easily heat the bread.
There is an interesting anecdote about steamed corn bread.In 1900，a joint force of eight countries invaded China.Empress Dowager Ci Xi fled the capital to Xi’an with her palace attendants and staff before the foreign expeditionary force moved into Beijing.
On the way to Xi’an，the empress felt hungry and extremely fatigue.The eunuchs searched everywhere，hoping to find food for the empress.They found nothing but one cold steamed corn bread from a villager nearby.
The empress quickly devoured the corn and then felt full.When Empress Dowager Ci Xi returned to her palace，she had cooks in the imperial kitchen make the steamed corn bread for her.The cooks made the bread in the same way as the common people made it.However，the bread made in the imperial kitchen was small in size，consisting of refined corn，soybean flour，sugar and sweet osmanthus petals.
The empress enjoyed eating the bread，and so this kind of corn bread was later named xiao wowotou（small steamed corn bread）and became one of the best known snacks from the imperial kitchen of the Qing Dynasty.
