Jiaozi – Chinese dumpling

As a symbol of Chinese food, Jiaozi, Chinese dumpling is a must at a lot of Chinese festivals, especially on the occasion of Chinese New Year’s eve. A story says Jiaozi was invented by doctor Zhang Zhongjing, a famous Chinese doctor in ancient China, to save poor people from frostbite as filling dough with meat and traditional Chinese medicine.
The pronunciation of Jiaozi came from the tradition of eating dumplings on Chinese New Year’s Eve, which became a tradition later after Zhang Zhongjing, the famous doctor, invented it. In Chinese ancient timing system, the time named Zi is twelve o’clock in the midnight. When this moment comes on the eve of the last day of a year the New Year is coming in time. And in Chinese, the whole process is called Geng Sui Jiao Zi that means the change of years and Jiao Zi means that the change happens at the very moment of Zi.
The shape of Jiaozi is like that of Yuanbao, a Chinese ancient silver currency, Chinese think that the shape is quite auspicious. Northern Chinese eat Jiaozi more while Southern Chinese eat less and don’t call it Huntun in stead of Jiaozi. And there were other names for Jiaozi in Chinese history, Jiao’er, Bianshi, boiled Momo, and etc.
There are sayings about Jiaozi, such as chu men jiaozi jin men mian, which means one needs to eat Jiaozi when leaving home for a long time and eat noodle when coming back home.
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