Folklore, Literature and Film
A staple food the world over and a national dish in many countries, the dumpling appears as a prop, an extra or even a character in works of literature, folkloric tales, poetry, film, songs and nursery rhymes. A few monuments and gastronomic or historical societies are devoted to raising the profile and protecting the history and heritage of very specific types of dumpling in countries as diverse as Italy, Ukraine and the USA. This chapter celebrates the dumpling in its artistic and quirky representations, and is intended as a collection of curious examples of how a simple food can be so deeply rooted in society and come to embody everything that is traditional, familiar and comforting.
Across Central Asia and the Middle East, Mullah Nasreddin or Hodja Nasrudin is a well-known folkloric and satirical character, a ‘wise fool’ whose adventures are captured in timeless, brief, meaningful tales that deliver moral lessons through subtle humour. Since the thirteenth century, generation after generation, Nasreddin’s tales have been narrated and added to, and they provide an accurate depiction of everyday life in small villages. The character’s passion for dumplings, and the misunderstanding that followed, are the subject of an Uzbek tale, which recounts that one day Nasreddin was travelling on his donkey and decided to stop for lunch at the house of a friend whose small dumplings (chuchvara) were renowned all over town. Nasreddin was in luck: the cook had made fresh chuchvara that very morning and they were hanging from the branches of a small tree near the kitchen, where they had been placed to dry in the sun. Lunch was served and Nasreddin could not stop praising the delicious chuchvara he had just been given. As he was leaving the house, still praising the cook for the delicious meal, he noticed the tree by the kitchen and, thinking the dumplings were growing from its branches, asked his host if he would be so kind as to give him a cutting to take home. The host, although baffled by the unusual request, cut a small branch and gave it to Nasreddin, who is still patiently watering the plant and wondering why dumplings are not growing on it.
Bronze statue of Mullah Nasreddin, a famous character of many Central Asian folkloric tales, in Bukhara, Uzbekistan.
Popular Japanese folkloric hero Momotaro with his travel companions: ‘Momotaro, Momotaro please give me one of your dumplings.’
As Mullah Nasreddin and his adventures are popular in Central Asia and the Middle East, so is Momotaro in Japan, and it is significant, in the context of the dumpling’s role as a comforting everyday staple, that he is also very fond of dumplings. Momotaro’s tale, a true classic in Japanese storytelling, tells of an old man and his wife who could not have children. One day they found a giant peach in a field and, to their great surprise, discovered a baby inside it. The baby grew to be a big boy, and it was not long before he was ready to leave his home and go off to fight the demons that were troubling the local community. His parents helped him to prepare for the journey, made him a bag of dumplings and saw him off. The version by Sayumi Kawauchi, translated by Ralph F. McCarthy and published in the book Once Upon a Time in Japan (1985), continues:
Smiling and waving, [Momotaro] marched straight off to Demon’s Island with the bag of dumplings hanging from his belt. On the way he met a dog. ‘Momotaro, Momotaro, please give me one of your dumplings. If you do, I’ll go with you and help you fight the demons,’ barked the dog. So Momotaro gave him a dumpling and set off again with the dog close behind him. Before they had gone far they met a monkey and a pheasant. And for the price of one dumpling each, these two also agreed to accompany Momotaro.
With the help of his companions, big and strong Momotaro fought the demons and earned their respect and the gratitude of all villagers who held him as a hero. Momotaro’s ability to engage the support of his travel companions and to fight the demons successfully would not have been quite the same without his bag of dumplings, which represents, in its simplicity, the strength he derived from his loving family.
Rice dumplings feature with traditional folkloric characters in ‘The Old Woman who Lost her Dumpling’ (1902), one of the many tales published by Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) as part of his collection entitled Japanese Fairy Tales (1918). The tale is about a woman who, while making rice-flour dumplings, dropped one, which rolled into a hole in the floor. As she was trying to reach it, she fell down the hole after it and found herself in a different country where there lived a terrifying Oni, a gigantic people-eating demon. The woman kept following her rolling dumpling and was captured by the Oni. As she was good at making dumplings, she was spared a sorrowful end and given a job in the kitchen instead. After a few adventures at the service of the Oni, the woman eventually managed to escape and return home with a magic rice paddle that allowed her to produce an infinite amount of dumplings and become very rich.
This strong link between dumplings and tradition was used by the Japanese writer Sōseki Natsume to represent the contradictions of Japanese society during the revolutionary Meiji era, a period during which Japan and its traditions started, for the first time in history, to emerge from isolation and merge with Western culture. In his novel I Am a Cat (1906), Sōseki describes upper-middle-class characters making fools of themselves by trying too hard to imitate Western customs. Many aspects of their everyday life are still strongly rooted in the centuries-old Japanese tradition, for example the way they dress, the etiquette that rules interpersonal relationships and, of course, the food they eat. In an amusing passage from the translation by Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson from 1972, Waverhouse, the talkative and self-centred friend of Mr Sneaze, tries to persuade him and his wife to enjoy some simple and thoroughly Japanese dumplings:
Let’s go try some of Imozaka’s famous dumplings. Have you ever tried those dumplings? You, too, Mrs Sneaze, sometime you really ought, if only just once, to try them. They’re beautifully soft and even more beautifully cheap.
Waverhouse’s suggestion clearly goes against the enormous efforts of pompous Mr Sneaze and his snooty wife to distance themselves from Japanese traditions. Instead, they try to ‘better’ themselves by embracing everything that comes from the West and turning up their noses at anything associated with Japanese tradition.
Japanese nikuman filled with eels, steamed in bamboo baskets, a speciality of Miyajima island in Japan.
In the same way as the changes in the Meiji era threatened traditions in Japan, including foods with strong associations with the past, in Italy, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of the Futurist movement in art and a supporter of Fascism, provoked all Italians in 1931 by calling for the abolition of pasta in his Manifesto of Futurist Cuisine. The manifesto stated:
We believe in the abolition of pasta, the absurd Italian gastronomic religion. Maybe the English derive strength from their cod, roast beef and pudding, the Dutch from their meat and cheese, the Germans from their sauerkraut, smoked bacon and sausage; but the Italians do not derive strength from pasta.
The main motivation for this message was political: the regime needed to reduce the demand for pasta to address the shortages and price increases of wheat, which was largely imported. Marinetti said that ‘one thinks, dreams and acts according to what one eats and drinks’, and questioned the nutritional value of pasta, accusing it of causing a series of weaknesses in the Italian population including ‘scepticism, sentimentalism, tiredness, pessimism, nostalgic inactivity and neutrality’. However, a group of artists from Genoa came out in support of the local speciality, ravioli, and wrote to Marinetti saying that they supported the stance taken against ‘macaroni, vermicelli, spaghetti and tortellini’ but asked for a declaration of ‘sincere neutrality toward the ravioli, optimistic and dynamic engines for which we have deep sympathy and a duty of gratitude and friendship’. Apparently Marinetti received poetical declarations of support for ravioli from other Futurist artists, including the painter Vittorio Osvaldo Tommasini (known as Farfa), who saw ravioli, probably because of its shape, as a ‘meaty love letter’.
Ho Xuan Huong, a Vietnamese concubine at the turn of the nineteenth century, wrote witty and erotic poems, often addressing women’s oppression in a patriarchal society. The beautiful poem reproduced below, which appeared in Poetry magazine in April 2008 translated by Marilyn Chin, contains a typical symbol of Chinese and Asian poetry, a ripe fruit or dumpling that represents the body of a woman.
Floating sweet dumpling
My body is powdery white and round
I sink and bob like a mountain in a pond
The hand that kneads me is hard and rough
You can’t destroy my true red heart.
In the Far East, dumplings, because of their ubiquitous status as an everyday food, are the subject of beautiful or significant scenes in a variety of films. The opening of Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), an internationally acclaimed film by the Taiwanese director Ang Lee, shows dumplings being prepared as part of the sumptuous and very traditional banquet that Mr Chu, a chef, widower and father of three grown-up daughters, prepares every Sunday for his family. It is at the table that the tension between tradition and modernity surfaces and is addressed through a sequence of announcements and surprises.
The film Gaau Ji (Dumplings, 2004), by the Hong Kong director Fruit Chan, contains a long and suggestive closeup scene about making dumplings. The story concerns a neglected wife who is prepared to do anything to stay young and attractive, including eating wontons filled with a special and extremely gruesome ingredient. The secret recipe has been developed by a former gynaecologist who performed illegal abortions before turning to the lucrative but no less disturbing business of helping rich women to mask their age.
In the film Oldboy (2003) by the South Korean director Park Chan-Wook, based on a Japanese manga, the main character is kidnapped and locked for fifteen years in a room in a secret location. Every meal he is given consists of dumplings (Korean gunmandu) from a nearby restaurant. When he is mysteriously released, he uses his memory of the dumpling’s taste to track down the person who imprisoned him. He goes from restaurant to restaurant until he recognizes the taste of the dumpling he had been fed throughout his imprisonment, and in the end manages to carry out his ferocious revenge.
Advert for Taiwanese film Eat Drink Man Woman (1994).
The popular animated film Kung Fu Panda (2008) contains entertaining scenes that revolve around dumplings. The main character is Po, a clumsy, dumpling-loving panda who aspires to become a kung fu master under the guidance and strict training of Master Shifu. Po’s lack of skill in kung fu seems insurmountable until Shifu discovers that Po is capable of incredible physical challenges when motivated by food. The scene of the Battle of the Dumpling between Po and Shifu is particularly action-packed and memorable.
In the sequel, Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), Po’s appetite for dumpling has not diminished and there is a hilarious scene where Po the Dumpling Warrior tries to impress his five masters by stuffing his mouth with no fewer than 40 dumplings. The contest ends in disaster, however, when a congratulatory pat on the back from Master Crane causes Po to spit them all out.
Children’s Characters
Cute cartoon characters and animations inspired by dumplings are popular in East Asia, where they appear in comics, cartoons, video games and soft toys. In the West, meanwhile, references to the dumpling can be spotted in children’s books and songs, including a number of traditional nursery rhymes.
Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear, for example, has a humorous adventure involving a scary giant dumpling in the story ‘Something Nasty in the Kitchen’ from Paddington Helps Out (first published in 1960). Mr and Mrs Brown are in bed with flu and Mrs Bird, the housekeeper at 32 Windsor Gardens, is away. Paddington decides to take charge of the kitchen and prepare a meal for his family, but things do not quite go to plan. He starts by boiling the cabbage in the kettle and using the water to make an undrinkable coffee for Mr Brown. Then, as ‘Paddington was very keen on stew, especially when it was served with dumplings’, he proceeds to make a dumpling mixture inside his hat, as he has run out of bowls. Once in the boiling water, the dumpling mixture gets out of control. It pushes up the lid of the pan and starts hanging over the side of the stove like a shapeless monster. At this stage, a fretful Paddington loses his cool, places his hat on his head a bit too firmly and runs for the door. ‘I am afraid I can’t raise my hat because it is stuck down with dumpling mixture’, he tells his friend Mr Gruber, who has arrived just in time to rescue the situation and help him tidy up the kitchen before Mrs Bird returns. The story, in common with all Paddington’s other adventures, has a happy ending.
Giant panda Po eating dumplings in the film Kung Fu Panda (2008).
Since many nursery rhymes and children’s songs are about food, including cakes, potatoes, porridge, sausages and hot cross buns, it is not surprising that a few are centred on the dumpling. ‘Diddle Diddle Dumpling’, a traditional street cry of dumpling sellers, has for at least two centuries featured as a line in a popular nursery rhyme, which is now – because of its strong rhythm – part of a selected core of poetry recommended for Year 1 children (aged five to six) in the UK:
My son John
Went to bed
With his trousers on
One shoe off
And one shoe on
Diddle diddle dumpling
My son John.
‘Diddle Diddle Dumpling’ and ‘Pussycat Ate the Dumplings’ are two of the hundreds of rhymes collated in The Real Mother Goose (first published in 1916), a very successful children’s book with distinctive pen and watercolour illustrations by Blanche Fisher Wright.
Pussycat ate the dumplings, the dumplings
Pussycat ate the dumplings
Mama stood by, and cried, ‘oh, fie!
Why did you eat the dumplings?’
‘Davy Davy Dumpling’ is often used in parents’ and babies’ groups as a ‘tickle’ rhyme, where parents are encouraged to change the first line by swapping ‘Davy’ for their baby’s name and to wiggle, tickle and nibble the baby, mimicking the content of the following lines:
Davy Davy Dumpling
Boil him in a pot
Sugar him, and butter him
And eat him while he’s hot!
The song ‘Il Tortellino’, presented during the 51st Zecchino d’Oro (2008), a televised Italian singing competition for children, describes a mother’s struggle to get her fussy little boy to eat his food. After spending fruitless hours in the kitchen preparing the most delicious and elaborate recipes, she decides to summon a council of other mothers to try and find a solution. After long deliberations it is decided to try tortellini, the ring-shaped filled dumpling originally from Bologna. The plan is successful and the choir happily sings:
It is the tortellino from Bologna
With broth without cream
Mum’s secret
To clean the plate
From that day in the homes
When it is dinner time
Children with their finger
are measuring
That ancient and funny ring
In the shape of a belly-button.
Dumplings even made it into ‘The Dumpling Song’ by the UK pop group Pet Shop Boys; that song also features in David Almond’s play for the under-tens My Dad’s a Birdman, about Lizzie Crow and her dad Jack who are trying to cope with Lizzie’s mother’s death with the help of Auntie Doreen’s comforting dumplings and a no-nonsense approach to life.
Dumplings are not just celebrated in nursery rhymes and children’s songs. A well-known Cuban song from the 1950s, ‘Los Tamalitos de Olga’, celebrates the delicious tamales sold by a street vendor in Cienfuegos.
A very different aspect of cultural heritage is linked to the role of food festivals in celebrating traditions characteristic of a region, town or community. As we have seen, the dumpling has played a very important part in food history and tradition, and so it is not surprising to find festivals focusing on dumplings – some of them rather curious.
The Rice Dumpling Festival, also known as the Dragon Boat Festival, falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, and is widely celebrated in China. The festival commemorates Qu Yuan, a patriotic poet who threw himself into the Ni Lo river in 278 BC when his land was captured by enemies. During the celebrations, Chinese people throw rice dumplings into the river as offerings to Qu Yuan, and play drums and gongs to frighten away fish and other sea creatures to prevent them from attacking Qu Yuan’s body. Rice dumplings are prepared by families before the celebration and are given as gifts to relatives and friends or presented as offerings to the ancestors.
Dumpling-making competition in Shenyang, China.
Oliver Onion, Cheese Chester and Pirate Parrot taking part in the Great Pierogi Race during the interval of a Pittsburgh Pirates match in Pennsylvania, U.S.
More than 100 contestants take part annually in a dumpling-making competition in Shenyang, the capital of northeast China’s Liaoning province. The dumplings are judged on their quality and quantity, and after the competition they are donated to local retirement homes and migrant workers.
In the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, the unusual Great Pittsburgh Pierogi Race N’at is a race between baseball mascots that takes place during Pittsburgh Pirates games. Four contestants race in giant dumpling (Polish pierogi) costumes: Jalapeño Hannah in a green hat, Cheese Chester in yellow, Sauerkraut Saul in red and Oliver Onion in purple, with Potato Pete, in blue, making occasional appearances. The dumplings usually run around the track and at times they are distracted or knocked to the ground by intruder mascot Pirate Parrot. Once a year the racing dumplings team takes on the Milwaukee Brewers’ racing sausages and, separately, the Washington Nationals’ racing U.S. Presidents.
Polish dumplings are also celebrated, together with other Polish traditions, in the annual Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Indiana. The festival is organized by descendants of Polish immigrants, to celebrate their ethnic heritage by reproducing, in a humorous way, some of their family memories. During the three-day festival, locals dressed as dumplings take part in and host singing and dancing competitions as well as a Pierogi Toss event, in which dumplings have to be thrown backwards and over the head, and a Pierogi Eating contest, which consists of three minutes to stuff one’s mouth with dumplings. The costumes include the popular Mr Pierogi and the Polish Princess, who mingle with the crowds posing for pictures; the Pieroguettes (Miss Mushroom, Miss Plum, Miss Cheese, Miss Potato, Miss Sauerkraut, Miss Chicken, Miss Cabbage, Miss Beef, Miss Apricot, Miss Berry and Miss Chick), who surround Mr Pierogi during the parade; and quite a number of Lil’ Dumplings, whose average age is six.
Pierogi Festival logo – this festival is organized by descendants of Polish immigrants in the town of Whiting, Indiana.
Food festivals themed around ravioli are very popular throughout Italy and combine the opportunity to taste local specialities with live music and dance.
Over in Italy, to reflect the strong links between ingredients, food specialities and the land, innumerable fairs and festivals are organized each year. Traditional foods can be sampled in loco while enjoying the local wine, traditional music and dances and the work of contemporary artists. These celebrations of local foods can be a one-day affair, such as Tortellino Day in Bologna, or can last up to a month, like the Festa del Tortello e del Formaggio Artigianale (Tortello and Artisan Cheese Festival) near Florence. However, most fairs last for a weekend or a week, between March and October, and most occur in June, July and August, coinciding with the school holidays and the best weather, allowing all generations to take part in the celebrations well into the night. In Emilia-Romagna one can enjoy the Sagra del Tortellino Tipico at Reno Centese (Ferrara); the Sagra del Tortellino at Castelfranco Emilia (Modena); or the Sagra del Raviolo Dolce at Casalfiumanese (Bologna). The fair in Castelfranco includes the re-enactment of the legend of the tortellino, in medieval costumes, with a local playing the part of the innkeeper inspired by a beautiful customer to create the stuffed pasta in the shape of her navel. The fair in Casalfiumanese started in 1925 and originally coincided with the much older fair of San Giuseppe, first held in 1738, during which sweet dumplings were given to the children taking part in the celebrations. As a result the tradition has grown up at the Sagra del Raviolo Dolce of throwing dumplings filled with jam and candied fruit to the crowds.
In Veneto the Festa del Nodo d’Amore (Love Knot Fair) takes place at Valeggio sul Mincio (Verona), More than 3,300 people sit at an impressive table over 1 km (½ mile) long to savour tortellini and other local specialities.
In Liguria local women prepare handmade dumplings for the Sagra del Raviolo held at Ceranesi (Genoa). At the Sagra del Raviolo Casalingo at Borgo Fornari (Genoa), only local ingredients from vegetable patches or wild herbs from the countryside are used; while the Sagra del Raviolo di Mare at Marola (La Spezia) celebrates fish and seafood fillings.
Logo of La Corte dell’Agnolotto Gobbo, an association devoted to the preservation of a traditional recipe from Piedmont, by local artist Antonio Guarene.
Many fairs are also held in Piedmont; they include the Sagra del Raviolo al Plin in Costigliole d’Asti (Asti); the Sagra dell’ Agnolotto in Vercelli; the Sagra dell’Agnolotto d’Asino at Calliano (Asti), at which donkey-meat fillings are a speciality; the Sagra dell’Agnolotto Doc at Casale Monferrato (Alessandria); the Sagra dell’Agnolotto e del Canestrello at Polonghera (Cuneo), where filled dumplings are celebrated together with the local chocolate biscuits; the Sagra dell’ Agnolotto at Primeglio, Passerano Marmorito (Asti), at Alessandria and also at Pecetto di Valenza (Alessandria); and the Sagra dei Ravioli at Rovereto di Gavi (Alessandria).
In Tuscany it is possible to taste different specialities at the Sagra del Raviolo at Contignano or Radicofani (both in the province of Siena), at Chitignano (Arezzo) or San Vincenzo (Livorno); or at various fairs in or near Florence, where the tortello, a rather large type of filled dumpling, is celebrated with cacciagione (game) in Borgo San Lorenzo, with formaggio artigianale (artisan cheese) in Florence or on its own at Scarperia. Further such festivals take place in many other Italian regions.
Societies and Associations
A typically Italian phenomenon is the presence of a number of associations and societies devoted to the protection and promotion of local ingredients and food specialities, and naturally many are named after specific types of dumpling. Some of the events they organize or participate in have suggestive and entertaining names, including Mani in Pasta (Hands in the Dough) or Festa dell’Affettatrice (Fair of the Meat Slicer).
One such association, the Corte dell’Agnolotto Gobbo (Court of the Hunched Dumpling), was founded in 2006 by a small group of friends. Its purpose is to record and preserve the traditional Piedmont recipes for agnolotto gobbo, which originated in the region around Asti, and to differentiate it from the agnolotto al plin, also rigorously made by hand but slightly different and increasing in popularity across the region. The original recipe for agnolotto gobbo was registered at the Council of Asti and granted a Denominazione Comunale (denomination of council origin; De.Co.) as a result of the Court’s activities.
The Ordine Obertengo dei Cavalieri del Raviolo e del Gavi (Order of the Ravioli Knights), meanwhile, inspired by medieval ceremonies, has been operating in Gavi since 1973, and organizes events, activities and themed dinners to promote the original handmade ravioli from Gavi.
Giant monument to the dumpling in the village of Glendon, Alberta, Canada.
One of the ways in which dumplings are celebrated elsewhere in the world is with unusual monuments. In Glendon, Alberta, Canada, there is a giant monument to the Ukrainian dumpling held by an equally giant fork, while in Poltava, Ukraine, there is a large sculpture of the local bran dumplings with a giant bowl and ladle. A similar monument in Cherkasy, Ukraine, shows Cossack Mamay, a Ukrainian folklore character well-known for his fondness for varenyky, eating from an earthenware pot while comfortably sitting on a giant crescent-shaped dumpling.
