A Tale about Chinese Dumplings

On mentioning Chinese food, dumplings will occur to the mind of many people. During spring festival, Chinese as well as people in many other counties are to make dumplings and have them with family members. As a Chinese old saying goes, no food is more delicious than dumplings. From this hyperbolic sentence, we can feel the good taste and popularity of dumplings among people. However, how many people know the origin of dumplings in China? Similar with other Chinese conventions, there is a tale with a person of good heart.
This person is called Zhang Zhongjing, the father of Chinese traditional medicines in eastern Han dynasty. Famous for his medical skill, he was known for his respectable moralities. There is his belief that as an official, my duty is to rescue the world while even as a common people, I will try to save other people in this country. In other words, unable to bring a peaceful life to others, he determined to be a skillful doctor to give their health. Dumplings represent his merciful actions in ancient time.
When Zhang was mayor of Changsha, he often donated medicines to the poor people and was respected by all the citizens in Changsha. It is said that Zhang run into many people with frozen ears on the way home after his resign. Due to the day of midwinter, the weather is very cold, making many people sick and even dead. On arriving home, he was busy in treating those people. However, there are too many patients waiting for treatment and some of them died for the delayed aids, which make Zhang feel sad. He was thinking over how to save so many people in short time day and night. At last, he ordered his students to build a big pan and boiled mutton with herbal medicines in the pan. Then cut those materials into pieces and packed them by wrapper of flour with the shape of ear. Every poor sick person was given two cooked “ears” and a bowl of soup. As mutton and the herbal medicines can promote blood circulation and sweat, people will feel warm and the frozen ears were cured at last. Those “ears” are the original dumplings. This donation lasted from the day of midwinter until spring festival. In order to congratulate the recovery of frozen ears, people began to make those “ears” on the eve of spring festival and enjoyed them on spring festival.
Gradually, those “ears” developed into dumplings nowadays. Till southern and northern dynasty, dumplings are eaten with soup not after fishing them out of soup. So people at that time called them as wonton. Even nowadays, you can found this way to eat in some places in China such as Henan province and Shanxi province.