I am a creature of habit; when in Beijing I stay at the same hotel, check my email in the same little libarary... and on my way back to the hotel I stop to buy my lunch at the same place, run by a jovial young husband and wife team, which sells takeaway jiaozi. This is the wife pictured above.

Some years ago I invited a friend of the Chinese persuasion to share my house so that we could both save money on living expenses. Neither of us was much on cooking but my rural retreat is miles from shops and restaurants. My friend did have one domestic skill that probably saved us both from malnutrician... she knew how to make dumplings (jiaozi).

Now, when I visit Beijing, due to those happy memories of home-cooked jiaozi I am drawn inexorably to this little family business

Jiaozi are the perfect intro to Chinese food for the Australian palate: tasty in a very unexotic way and not at all hot, meaty without being overwhelmed by salt and including vegetables such as cabbage to add a little subtlety to the taste. My friend's parents would also send her bags of puffy, doughy little balls called baozi which could also be meaty but were sometimes quite sweet.

These small phenomena are two of China's favorite snacks - each one being little more than a tasty mouthful. Jiaozi are usually called "dumplings" in English and can be steamed, boiled or fried. They consist of a thin pastry envelope containing ground meat and chopped vegetables. Traditionally, families make and eat jiaozi for the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival. Making jiaozi is a social event with a group of people stuffing the dumplings together, the idea being that many hands make light work, and the result is all the tastier for your having participated in the preparation! You can order a plate of jiaozi in a restaurant, or you'll find them served in little snack food joints , often in soup (jiaozi tang). Tradition traces jiaozi back to the Eastern Han Period when its invention was credited with curing the plague.

Baozi are steamed buns in a variety of sizes stuffed with a variety of fillings. These are great snacks that you'll find all over China and you can always start an argument over which region produces the most delicious. In the southwest or northwest, baozi are stuffed with pork; in Sichuan, they can be spicy and dipped in hot sauce; around the Shanghai area, you'll find vegetarian baozi filled with spinach and tofu.

There is a legend about the origin of Jiaozi. In the later years of the Eastern Han Period (Dong Han) an official called Zhang Zhongjing invented a kind of food to help poor people keep warm in cold winter containing hot pepper and some medicinal materials as the fillings.

Baozi, on the other hand, dates back almost 1,800 years. It is said that the history of baozi dates back to the Three Kingdoms period (220-280). Zhuge Liang (181-234), a military strategist of the time, was on an expedition to far South China when his army caught a plague. The incarnation of wisdom in Chinese history, he invented this meal shaped as a human head and made of flour and pork and beef to offer as a sacrifice and then as food to cure the soldiers' plague.

This food, originally called mantou (flour head), became a typical food of the Chinese people. In some parts of southern China, for example Shanghai, steamed bread, either with stuffing or not, is still called mantou. But in the north, people started to call stuffed buns baozi, with bao meaning "wrapping."

Jiaozi