(Photo : Chive Dumplings)

Defachang restaurant in Xia'an City, northwest China is at the luxurious side of the scale, which is renowned for serving 318 selections of dumpling.

Like Us on Facebook

Founded in 1936, Defachang restaurant started as a plain eatery serving just one kind of "jiaozi," the common boiled dumpling offered in north China.

Defachang restaurant, by the end of 1970s, had developed an "all-dumpling" feast. Its flagship restaurant is in the heart of old Xi'an.

There's a special kitchen designed solely for preparing the dumpling banquets and Chef Ma Shunli, Defachang's master dumpling maker, looks after other chefs as they place fillings in wheat flour wrappings.

There are 15 types of "all-dumpling" feasts which differ in prices and the rundown of seasonal menus are posted on the wall. The priciest one amounts to almost $1000 for a table of 10 people.

According to Master Chef Ma, the menus adjust in relation to the 24 solar terms of the traditional Chinese calendar. They do so because during the solar terms, specific ingredients of the dumplings are at their most nutritious and freshest and that's when it is best to include them in their dumplings. That is what they call "24-solar-term" dumplings, which changes every couple of weeks.

"Lotus Seedpod Rising Above The Water" is one of the restaurant's most sought after kind of dumpling. It is filled with lotus root and pork and it has 13 holes on its top like a seedpod. These 13 holes, according to Ma, symbolize the 13 imperial dynasties that have turned Xi'an their capital.

Nowadays, dumplings are just seen as an ordinary part of the meal which you can purchase in any convenient stores or grocery markets, but many dumpling makers hope that the urban Chinese will soon realize and consider celebrating special occasions with a dumpling feast.