Our own itineraries send you to Shanghai for "soup dumplings" three separate times and never explain what one is or how to eat it. That is not unusual — it is what the English word does. Dumpling flattens a set of foods that a Chinese eater would not group together at all, because the thing that separates them is not the filling but the dough.
Get the dough right and the rest of the category falls into place.
The families#
| What you are pointing at | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| 饺子 (jiǎozi) | Unleavened wheat wrapper — closer to pasta than to bread. Boiled, steamed, or pan-fried as 锅贴 (guōtiē) |
| 包子 (bāozi) | Leavened, risen dough. This is bread with a filling, and belongs to a different meal |
| 馒头 (mántou) | The same bread with nothing in it |
| 小笼包 (xiǎolóngbāo) | A thin unleavened skin despite the name, holding meat and soup |
| 馄饨 (húntun) | A much thinner, floppier wrapper, served in broth rather than drained |
| 烧卖 (shāomài) | Open at the top, pinched into a waist, usually with sticky rice or pork |
The single most useful line to hold on to: a baozi is bread and a jiaozi is pasta. They are ordered at different times of day, eaten in different quantities, and are not substitutes for each other.
The 馒头 confusion, which is not your mistake#
If a shop selling soup dumplings calls itself 馒头店 — a mantou shop — nothing has gone wrong. Shanghainese traditionally had no word 包子 at all: everything with a filling was 馒头. A pork bun is 肉馒头, a vegetable bun is 菜馒头, and a xiaolongbao is properly 小笼馒头. The plain northern bun, the one with nothing in it, gets called 淡馒头 — "plain mantou" — to distinguish it.
Northern Chinese split the two words apart around the Qing dynasty, filled becoming 包子 and unfilled staying 馒头. The south never did. So the century-old shop at Yu Garden is named exactly as a Shanghainese would name it, and the English menu beside it is the thing that has been translated oddly.
Wontons have six names#
馄饨 is the northern and Jiangnan word. Sichuan and Chongqing call the same food 抄手 (chāoshǒu), Guangdong 云吞 (yúntūn), Fujian 扁食 (biǎnshí), Hubei 包面 (bāomiàn) and Jiangxi 清汤 (qīngtāng).
They are not identical: the Cantonese wrapper is the thinnest and most translucent and the filling leans on prawn with pork; the Sichuanese version is folded into a fatter shape and served in chilli oil rather than clear broth — which is why "chao shou" appears on our street food page under Chengdu rather than under soup. Same family, different dish.
How to eat a soup dumpling#
This is the practical half, and it matters because the filling comes out of the steamer at a temperature that will blister the roof of your mouth. The soup is not poured in — a meat-and-aspic jelly is folded into the filling cold, and it melts into liquid while the basket steams.
- Lift it by the topknot, with chopsticks, gently. The skin is thin and tears if you grab the body.
- Set it on your spoon rather than lifting it straight to your mouth.
- Bite a small hole in the side and let the soup run into the spoon.
- Wait. Thirty seconds. This is the step people skip and regret.
- Drink the soup from the spoon, then eat the dumpling, with a little ginger and vinegar if you want it.
Where they came from, and how to order#
The xiaolongbao is younger and more precisely dated than most Chinese dishes. It was created in 1871 at a snack shop in Nanxiang, then a town in Jiading and now part of outer Shanghai, by an owner who shrank the existing bun and reversed its proportions — thin skin, heavy filling, and a specification of ten buns to every 两 (liǎng, 50 g) of flour. It reached the Shanghai city god temple around 1900, which is where visitors meet it now.
That weight unit is also how you order. In much of the north, jiaozi are sold by the 两 rather than by the piece, so a menu asking how many liang you want is asking for weight of dough, and the count per liang varies by shop — ask, or start with two and add. In the south, xiaolongbao and shaomai come by the 笼 (lóng), the steamer basket, and a basket is a portion for one. How ordering works more generally covers the rest of the menu around them.
Frequently asked questions#
What is the difference between jiaozi and baozi?#
The dough. A 饺子 has an unleavened wrapper and behaves like pasta — boiled, steamed or pan-fried. A 包子 is made from leavened, risen dough, so it is bread with a filling. They are eaten at different times and in different quantities, and are not interchangeable.
How do you eat a soup dumpling without burning yourself?#
Lift it by the topknot onto your spoon, bite a small hole in the side, let the soup run out, and then wait about thirty seconds before eating it. The filling comes out of the steamer hot enough to blister, and there is no way to judge the temperature from the outside.
Why is a soup dumpling shop called a mantou shop?#
Because Shanghainese traditionally has no word for 包子 — anything with a filling is 馒头. A xiaolongbao is properly 小笼馒头, and the plain unfilled bun is distinguished as 淡馒头. Northern Chinese separated the two words around the Qing dynasty; the south did not.
What is the difference between wontons, chao shou and yun tun?#
They are the same family under different regional names — 馄饨 in the north and Jiangnan, 抄手 in Sichuan and Chongqing, 云吞 in Guangdong, 扁食 in Fujian, 包面 in Hubei, 清汤 in Jiangxi. The wrappers and treatment differ: Cantonese thinnest and prawn-led in clear broth, Sichuanese fatter and served in chilli oil.
How do you order dumplings in China?#
In the north, jiaozi are commonly sold by weight — by the 两 of dough rather than by the piece — so a menu may ask how many liang you want, and the count varies by shop. In the south, xiaolongbao and shaomai arrive by the steamer basket, one basket being a portion for one person.
Where were soup dumplings invented?#
In Nanxiang, then a town in Jiading and now part of outer Shanghai, in 1871. The innovation was to shrink an existing bun and reverse its proportions to a thin skin and a heavy filling, made to a fixed specification of ten to each 50 g of flour. The recipe reached the Shanghai city god temple around 1900.