Dumplings are for Sharing

Remember when we could sit and wrap and eat dumplings together?

February 12th is the first day of Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival 春节 (chūn jié). In China, it is the biggest holiday of the year. Everything shuts down for a week, people travel for hours to go “home” and see family. The focus is on kinship and food as everyone cooks and eats traditional dishes, chatting and wrapping dumplings together as a family.

For many laborers—people working in factories, construction, agriculture, and other non-office jobs—it is the only time of year they get more than a day off. For many parents, it is the only time of year they can see their kids who are being raised by the grandparents (see the movie Last Train Home 归途列车 for an example of a typical migrant worker family).

This year, however, is the second year in a row that travel around China is banned. Last year, many people travelled home but then were stuck there for weeks. The worldwide travel bans are a huge emotional burden to the diaspora of Chinese families all over the world. A weight that, this year, is shared by people in every country who were restricted from celebrating other major holidays with family, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Kwanzaa, New Years.

Lunar New Year marks one year of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly one year of California having a “shelter in place” order in effect.

My family and friends are all over the world. Last year was my first Lunar New Year living outside of China since 2017. In the absence of the city-wide shutdown like in Shanghai, we hosted a small new year party for some local friends. They came over and we wrapped and ate dumplings together. It wasn’t much but it kept the spirit of China alive for me in the USA.

This year, there are no festivities and no dumpling wrapping parties. Just me making dumplings alone.

To celebrate the holiday and do something a little different, I took the time to make dumplings from scratch (including the wrappers). I opted to make the northern style boiled dumplings that are slurped with broth, vinegar, and chili sauce, warming you from your belly.

In Shanghai, there was a chain store called 妈妈的味道 (Mom’s Flavor) that only serves these northern style boiled dumplings. One time, I went to the dumpling house with one of my Chinese language teachers, a man from Shandong province in the cold northeast of China. We had 45 minutes before class started and we needed to get a quick dinner. We ordered separately at the register then sat side-by-side at the narrow counter along the wall, prepping our dipping sauce with a spoonful of chili sauce. A server came out from the back room with two low-rimmed bowls of dumplings and placed one in front of each of us. We grabbed a pair of chopsticks from the container on the counter, hunched over our bowls, and proceeded to slurp the dumplings in silence (when you slurp, you take air in with the food which helps to cool the boiling-hot dumplings).

It was peaceful to sit side-by-side without speaking, only the sound of slurping. In the classroom, he was the teacher and I was the neophyte student. In life, he was ten years my junior, just setting out on his career as a Chinese language teacher. In Shanghai, he was the local and I was a traveler from afar, from a culture he had only ever seen in movies. Yet we sat there together, eating the simple and comforting tiny packets of dough, sharing in the warmth that comes from good food and companionship.

Today, I eat alone. I make dumplings at home instead of going out to a restaurant. I speak with my spouse but see no one else in our isolated pandemic existence. Eating the steaming dumplings transports me to Shanghai, to a time when, for a moment, I could share a quiet meal side-by-side with someone so different and feel the same warmth inside.

In memory of those great times, not so long ago, when I could share a meal with anyone, anytime, I make dumplings. In recognition of the billions of people worldwide who were unable to share holiday traditions with family this year, I make dumplings. In celebration of the lunar year of the ox, I make dumplings. I only wish I could share them with you.

Instead, here is the recipe I used to make Chive and Egg dumplings 韭菜鸡蛋饺子 (jiǔ cài jī dàn jiǎo zi), from my favorite Chinese food blog, The Woks of Life.

• Pork and Chive Dumplings -- I substituted Chive and Egg filling

• And just for fun, here are 3 Ways to Cook Dumplings