Shumai 烧卖

Teahouses, especially along the Silk Road, became increasingly abundant during the Song dynasty (960-1279 AD) (Junru 125). The Cantonese shumai, the oldest variation, is believed to have originated in the Guangdong province in southern China in such a teahouse. The Guangdong province, particularly the central capital city of Guangzhou (home to the third largest harbor in China), would have encountered a lot of trade and foreign merchants (Schlotter 234), thus making it an ideal location for dim sum and consequently shumai. Although the first documented evidence of shumai is from the Song dynasty (Dunlop 191), it is possible that shumai was “born” alongside the emergence of tea, foreign foods, and many other dumplings during the Tang dynasty (Anderson 54). The origin of the dumpling itself in China is widely debated, but there is evidence to indicate it is a central Asian/Near Eastern borrowing (Anderson 180).