Chinese · dumpling
What is the filling in these dumplings?
I feel like having some dumplings.
We're going out for dumplings in the evening, all right?
Dumplings are essential at the New Year's Eve dinner table.
This means that eating dumplings on New Year's eve is a symbol of family reunion.
If you mention New Year in China, the image that many people will think of is a family gathered around wrapping dumplings together.
In Chinese, 'dumpling' and 'first exchange' are homophones, so they have a rich cultural association.
All of the longing and wishes for good fortune are wrapped up in the fragile skin of the dumplings.
Especially in northern China, wrapping and eating dumplings has become an important activity for happily spending New Year's Eve in many households.
The custom of eating dumplings on New Year's Eve is related to an ancient Chinese method of measuring time; in ancient China, each day was divided into twelve sections: the beginning of each day was called 'first time', which corresponds to the period from 11pm to 1am.