By Mary King

CRI recently held a dumpling-making afternoon to get its staff into the Spring Festival spirit, and I couldn’t resist so I headed to the kitchen to participate in the activities. However, much more was going on than simply dumpling making.

The afternoon kicked off with Chinese cheerleading cowgirls strutting their stuff in the CRI canteen – pom-poms being wildly waved around et al. The dancing was followed by welcoming words from members of the Youth League of CRI who were proudly donning their military costumes. The chef followed up with a few culinary tips.

Kitchen staff then proceeded to cover tables with flour and roll out dough into long snakes-like pieces. It all looked easy enough. The next step entailed breaking off pieces from the snake-like dough, rolling them into small balls and then bringing out the rolling pins to flatten the dough into small circles. So far, so good, I thought. However, the tricky part was definitely going to be filling the dough with mincemeat and folding them. Chinese dumpling-making definitely demands more skills than making English dumplings.

Once the demonstrations were over staff were split into two groups to see who could make dumplings the fastest. The aim was for the two groups to make a total of 2,010 dumplings to mark the year 2010. I joined one of the groups, but proved to a let down to my team as I was way too much of a klutz with the rolling pin.

My dumpling-filling and folding skills were even worse, but I consoled myself with the thought that the English have never been renowned for their culinary skills. One of the chefs encouraged me by giving me a quick private lesson in dumpling filling and folding techniques until eventually I made what was a passable jiao-zi.

I was impressed to see everyone working well together in their teams, producing 2,010 dumplings in no time at all. Among the dumpling makers were also the President of CRI, Wang Gengnian, and the Vice President of CRI, Xia Jixuan.

By the end of my first ever jiao-zi-making session my stomach was rumbling and my mouth was watering in expectations of chowing down on some really delicious dumplings. Yum! Yum!