Once upon a time in Hangzhou: 餃子 “Jiaozi!”

They are very tasty and you can eat them both for breakfast and at anytime else. They can be steamed or fried, can be with meat or with vegetables or both and they are not just a Chinese specialty. In France and Italy, they call their species for Ravioli, in Russia they are called Pelmeni, and in Poland and other eastern European countries; they are Pierogi.
In Germany they have something like it called Maultaschen, and I could go on like that for a while, I think.
This is about the Chinese Dumplings: “Jiaozi”. These dumplings are very common in the Chinese cuisine, where especially the northern provinces enjoy them throughout the year, and elsewhere to special occasions.

During the Easter break 2010; the Mortensens went on a school exchange trip to China's Romantic Capital of Hangzhou, joining our head of Chinese language; Mr Yu and 17 students from year 9 to 11.
We visited a college there and our students were accommodated in private homes to develop their Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese), and we had an apartment on the campus.
Every morning a friendly young woman - Ms. Yu- who took us to the schools cafeteria for breakfast, picked us up. It was a huge room with mounted tables and chairs and designed to feed the around 3 thousand students, who was studying there and lived there in dormitories.
At the time we got there, only the teachers who also lived on campus, was there for breakfast. We had to line up in front of a little hole in a big glass wall, which separated the eating area and the kitchen, where they gave out the food. Just like in a bank or at the post office. Behind each of the food stations, stood 4 women in cooking uniforms serving the hungry masses the food they asked for.
When us two “Gweilos” got into the line together with Ms. Yu, a lot of giggling and whispering began among the women around the food trays, and as Catriona came up infrot of them, all of them gathered together with the head and their ears close to the hole, so they could hear what she would like. With some help from Ms. Yu, she managed to get an overview of what was available, and she started ordering, and every time the ladies said the word in Chinese and Catriona tried to pronounce it after them. This was a source for some great entertainment for the ladies behind the counter, as they stacked the named items unto her tray. When she seemed to have finished they asked “Jiaozi?” and pointed on the nice looking dumplings on a tray at the back.
Both of us know these dumplings from our China adventures before, and for sure these “Jiaozi’s” should be on the tray for a decent Chinese breakfast.
As it became my turn al the smiling faces once again peeped through the little opening in the glass wall, and as the word “Jaoutzhe” came out of my mouth, they nearly all fell backwards in a huge laughter attack, but pulled themselves together and dumped a huge portion to my tray.
I felt somehow embarrassed, but what; I could only try again to pronounce that word by listening to Ms. Yu at my side and carefully watch her lips while she once again very slowly said; “Jiaozi”.
Whatever; the ladies had decided that I needed some of the other stuff they had in their pots, and soon I stood there with a huge mountain of various unspecified food items on the tray, ready to walk to one of the tables, where Catriona and Mr. Yu and his family already sat, and very experienced maneuvered their breakfast into their mouth with chopsticks, while Catriona were still chasing one of her “Jiaozi’s” around the plate with hers. Before I could leave from the food handout spot, one of the ladies presented me a kind of round ball on a plate and made it clear that I really should taste this one, so that also found it’s way onto my tray, and I was ready to begin my own battle of finger artistic and chopsticks.The breakfast was indeed very tasty; even I couldn’t manage all of it. The “Jiaozi” went down first, then some kind of omelet with chives, some bread with herps and finally the tennis ball sized ball, they ladies had insisted me to try. It was some kind of sticky rice ball, with some sweet bean paste inside in the middle, and the outside was covered in sesame seeds, which stuck onto the sticky surface. It was very nice and a good sweet finish. But man, was I stuffed. I decided that the next morning I would insist only to take what I chose myself, and then less of it.
As we all left, all the happy faces behind the glass wall was again all stuck through the hole, laughing and waving.
Very friendly people those Chinese.
This turned out to be an ever-returning ritual. Every morning when we came for breakfast the same kind of show, just that they now knew what we liked, and even if we were a bit late and all the Jiaozi’s was gone, they’d save some for us on a tray behind, where no one else could see them, and then when we came, they proudly took them out and shoveled them onto our trays.
On one of those late days, we happened to be the last ones havinv breakfast, and just after we'd got our portions, all the staff from the kitchen came out, and started to line up them selves, as we'd done. Now it was they turn to be served and have their breakfast.
As a part of the cultural exchange program, we were going to make dumplings from scratch one of the days we were there. So that morning we got meet in the meeting room by a bunch of year 4 students, who should help us doing the shopping in the supermarket for all the ingredients, and then later back at the school a section of the cafeteria was transformed into a kitchen, where we all –our 35 students and another group from Auckland in New Zealand – were going to produce a huge amount of “Jiaozi’s”. That was very interesting, and on that day we could eat as
many as we liked, and even then there was so many left, that we tried if we could pay back our depts to the kitchen staff, by offering them the leftovers. They just laughed. Some of them tried our deformed Jaiozi’s, and kind of signalled back, that they were good, but again; they are very friendly those Chinese!