Newfangled or traditional? A choice of tastes in annual festival snack
Qingtuan made at Sunya Cantonese Restaurant
A consumer buys qingtuan at Sunya Cantonese Restaurant.
The Qingming Festival, which falls this year on April 3-5, is a time when people visit the tombs of ancestors to pay their respects and eat a traditional snack called qingtuan.
The green dumplings are made of glutinous rice, tinted with the hue of barley grass, which is only edible in springtime. The color of the dumplings hasn’t changed, but their fillings are taking on creative new flavors.
Restaurants are coming up with all sorts of novel tastes alongside the traditional sweet bean paste fillings.
The 95-year-old Sunya Cantonese Restaurant on the Nanjing Road Pedestrian Mall has introduced a filling of fotiaoqiang, or “Buddha jumps over the wall,” soup.
It sells about 400 of these dumplings daily, despite the somewhat pricey cost of 25 yuan (US$3.84) each.
People buy qingtuan at Xing Hua Lou.
Chefs make qingtuan at Sunya Cantonese Restaurant.
Executive chef Huang Renkang said the idea came after fotiaoqiang served as part of the restaurant's take-out New Year's Eve dinners was such a hit with consumers.
The soup for the qingtuan is made of six major ingredients: sea cucumber, abalone, scallops, ham, fish maw, and chicken.
"I thought of combining fotiaoqiang with qingtuan because the green glutinous rice balls are an excellent way to lock the soup into the dumpling, compared with other seasonal snacks such as mooncakes,” Huang said. "The difficulty lies in the flavor of the soup because sea cucumber and abalone have a very light flavor, and we need to make the soup flavor permeate into these ingredients."
Even before the Spring Festival holiday ended in February, Huang and his team were already starting to develop the new recipe. Trial samples were tested and perfected.
"The proportion of ingredients is important, which is different from traditional fotiaoqiang cuisine," he said.
People buy qingtuan at Xing Hua Lou.
Gavin Ma, a native of Shantou in the Cantonese cuisine capital of Guangdong Province, bought three boxes of qingtuan.
"These include both traditional and new flavors,” he said, “but I am most curious about new flavors such as fotiaoqiang and yanduxian.”
Yanduxian is a typical Shanghai springtime soup with pork and bamboo shoots.
"I just tasted yanduxian several days ago and learned it is a Shanghai specialty dish," Ma said. "It is very tasty, and I now I am curious about it as a filling in qingtuan."
Another new flavor launched by the restaurant is shrimp with shepherd's purse, sold in limited quantities.
"Shepherd's purse is a vegetable favored by locals, " said Huang. "The flavor has proven very popular."
Other new fillings include xiefen, or “crab powder,” and cashews with butter.
"Young people really like cashews with butter dumplings,” Huang said. “With Qingming approaching, we are selling 600 to 700 a day.”
A chef makes qingtuan at Sunya Cantonese Restaurant.
All the novel tastes haven’t usurped the traditional.
Huang’s best-selling qingtuan remain those filled with traditional sweetened bean paste. His restaurant sells about 10,000 of them a day, rising to between 20,000 and 30,000 as the Qingming Festival approaches.
In fact, queues started to form outside the restaurant this week.
Restaurant staff start work at 3am to prepare for the demand. Huang said competition is fierce this year.
"Many restaurants have started selling qingtuan to make up for the losses they suffered from the coronavirus pandemic,” he said.
Sunya Cantonese Restaurant has gone into online sales, which are proving even more lucrative than on-site sales, Huang said. But people wanting to try the new flavors have to show up in person because specialty qingtuan are all handmade at the restaurant.
People buy qingtuan at Xing Hua Lou.
The restaurant Xing Hua Lou in Huangpu District, which dates back to 1851, is taking a more conventional approach to festival fare this year.
The restaurant is known for its qingtuan filled with salted egg yolk and dried meat floss. The dumplings became a hit when they first hit the market in 2016. People queued for up to eight hours at a time to buy them.
Last year, the restaurant launched new flavors such as cheese beef, and shredded chicken and bacon filling. The only new flavor this year is fresh shepherd's purse with pork.
"Many people think of wonton fillings, but this one is different," said Zhang Jiquan, a dim-sum master at the restaurant. "It’s simple but special because we don't use traditional meat paste like wonton fillings, but rather diced streaky pork instead. And instead of traditional bamboo shoot, we use diced lotus root, which lends a sweet taste."
Zhang admitted that many people asked why Xing Hua Lou is taking what might be described as a more conventional approach this year.
"Since 2016, when the salted egg yolk and dried meat floss qingtuan became an online sensation, restaurants are coming up with all sorts of novel flavors for traditional foods,” he told Shanghai Daily. “The trend is eye-catching but sometimes goes too far off track."
A chef makes qingtuan at Sunya Cantonese Restaurant.
He added, "We have tried cheese sea salt and milk tea flavors, but finally we gave them up because they were too far afield from traditional track qingtuan, which should be the embodiment of Chinese culture. As a time-honored restaurant of some 170 years, we have a strong cultural sense.”
The best-selling qingtuan at his restaurant remain those filled with salted egg yolk and dried meat floss, followed by sweetened bean paste and fresh shepherd's purse with pork.
Traditional bean paste filling is preferred by older people, he said.
"I buy traditional flavors such as sweetened bean paste because they represent our childhood tastes and are so closely associated with Qingming,” said Wang Jianqing, a local retiree.
Young people are more mixed in their choices.
"I considered cheese beef,” said Fang Fang, a white-collar worker from the North Bund area, who said she is curious about new flavors. “But I finally bought sweetened bean paste and salted egg yolk and dried meat floss for my parents because they don't like new flavors."
Lin Xiao, another consumer, is more adventurous.
"I want to try all new flavors because I'd like a change of taste after eating salted egg yolk and dried meat floss all the time."
Other novel flavors of qingtuan in the city include luosifen, a rice noodle known for its pungent smell of pickled bamboo shoots; sour and spicy chicken feet offered at Freshippo; durian-filled dumplings at Qiao Jia Shan, and cheese rose at Shen Da Cheng.
