History of Dumplings

 In the thousands of years of Chinese culinary history, dumplings were not necessarily the first to appear, but they are certainly the most influential and unique.

"The dumpling is a symbol of the Chinese people's hope for a happy and healthy year ahead.

Chinese dumplings, or Chinese dumplings in English, are a slightly flattened form of dough filled with a dough skin.

In 1972 Chinese archaeologists found several complete dumplings, half-moon shaped, similar to the shape of today's dumplings, in a Tang Dynasty tomb in Tulufan Astana, Xinjiang. These are the earliest physical dumplings ever found.

Dumplings became the dominant food of the Chinese New Year in the Han Dynasty. After the social upheaval of the Warring States and the end of the Qin Dynasty, the early Western Han Dynasty implemented a policy of "rest and recuperation", social production was restored and developed, social order was stabilised, the date of the New Year was established and dumplings were eaten on the first day of the first month. From the Han Dynasty to the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the custom of eating dumplings on the first day of the first month of the new year intensified. The Ming Dynasty's "Ming Palace History - History Collection" records the scene of eating dumplings on New Year's Eve, "five nights up ...... drink pepper cypress wine, eat water snacks, that is, flat food also. Or secretly wrapped in silver money one or two in the inside, get it to divine the auspiciousness of a year." Spring Festival is the most poetic festival, with the beginning of spring as the beginning of the year, welcoming the New Year also means welcoming spring. This is why the New Year is the first and most important festival in Chinese life, both joyful and sacred, as Lu Xun said, "The end of the old calendar is after all most like the end of the year." The people have taken the seeds of spring, the ploughing of summer, the harvest of autumn and the collection of winter and brewed them together into a strong joy and sweetness, and the four seasons of expectation and anticipation are all concentrated on this day, as parents bring out the joy they have saved up all year. The sons and daughters who are away from home, whether it is sunny, cold and warm, or snowy, snowy, snowy, wind and frosty, even if the sky is far away, close to home, they have to "run" home to eat the New Year dumplings. For the sake of this dumpling, people work at sunrise, sunset, hard work and hope, time and again home, time and again on the road, New Year's Eve dumpling is the end, is also the starting point.

Excavation images