by Daisy Wakefield
June 2009

Baozi might be the Chinese equivalent of the fast food breakfast sandwich – these sweet and savory buns are easy to grab and eat on the run. They’re cheap, too. A single baozi costs anywhere from 8 fen to a whopping 1.2 RMB. But whether it’s the taste, convenience or price, the baozi is a national breakfast staple.

For the morning commuter – adult and child alike – street-side stalls serve up piping hot baozi from large bamboo steamers. Doughy and pleated at the top to look like a chrysanthemum, baozi are most commonly filled with meat and vegetables. Other variations include sweet bean paste, lotus root, vermicelli or sesame seed paste. The Cantonese version of the baozi is filled with sweet barbeque pork (cha shao bao). And the well-known Shanghai variation is the xiao long bao – though its thin, non-yeast wrapping makes it tough to eat on the go.

Baozi has a long history in China – some historians date it back to the Three Kindgoms period when a military officer supposedly created a food in the shape of a head to offer as a sacrifice when his army caught a plague. From then, the result was called “mantou” (flour head). Later, people started calling these stuffed buns “baozi” after “bao” which means wrapping.