Facts about Chinese Dim Sum

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The Cantonese word Yum Cha refers to drinking tea and eating dim sumat a restaurant. Dim sum (Dianxin in Chinese) is a style of Guangdong(Cantonese) food prepared as individual portions served in small roundbamboo baskets or on small plates. Learn more about Chinese food


Customers choose from different fully cooked dishes that servers pushon carts around the restaurant, and customers can choose their disheswhile seated at their tables. Each dim sum dish is normally served withthree to four servings per dish. Because of the small portions, peoplecan try a variety of food. Also, dim sum usually comes with tea (such asjasmine or green tea). Chinese people believe that drinking tea withgreasy food burns away some of the fat from your meal.


Facts about Chinese Dim Sum: http://www.chinesecultureshop.com/facts-about-chinese-dim-sum/

How to Order


Instead of ordering from a menu, customers choose from an assortmentof dishes that servers push around on carts. Customers point and chooseones you wish to try before servers move onto the next table. Sometime,you see people getting to the carts instead of waiting until the cartscome to the table, and this is perfectly acceptable in Chinese culture.Some restaurants do not have carts and you have to order your dishes bychecking the preprinted checklist.

Chinese Tradition


Dim sum is usually linked with the old tradition yum cha (drinkingtea), and it is original teahouses that were established along roadsidefor travelers who needed a place to rest. These teahouses were smallroadside pit stops that provided calming tea and food such as steam meatvegetable bun. Rural farmers who are exhausted after long hours ofworking in the fields would head to the local teahouses for tea and foodas a way to relax.

Yum Cha in Modern World


1) The elder gather to eat dim sum after morning exercises.
2) Yum cha is treated as a weekend family day activity.
3) Yum cha is a social occasion when friends gather to enjoy delicious dumplings and little bites served, and chat.

Two Important Things Chinese People Do


1) Pour tea for others before filling one’s own cup during a meal
2) Thank the person pouring the tea by tapping both the index and middle finger

Dim Sum You Might Want to Try


If you are new to eating dim sum, here are some of our favorites.These are steam Har Gow (steam shrimp dumpling), Xiao Long Bao (steammeat vegetable dumpling with a juicy soup sauce inside the dumpling), LoMai Gai (rice wrapped in lotus leaf), Cha Siu Bao (barbecue pork bun),Shao Mai (small steam dumplings with either pork, shrimp, or both), FungZou (phoenix claws), Taro Dumpling (mashed taro, mushrooms, shrimp, andpork), Chang Fen (rice noodles that are steamed and rolled), Egg Tart(has an egg custard filing in a pastry crust), Dou Fu Fa (silky tofuserved with ginger and jasmine flavored syrup), Mang Guo Bu Ding (mangopudding).