Pan'an Fangqian Dumplings 磐安方前扁食
Pan'an Fangqian Dumplings is featured among the local specialties of Zhejiang.
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Pan'an Fangqian Dumplings (磐安方前扁食), known locally as bianshi, are dumplings from Fangqian town (方前镇) in Pan'an county (磐安县), Jinhua (金华). They look almost exactly like wontons but are made differently: the wrapper is rolled from local sweet-potato starch instead of wheat flour, and the filling is cooked before the dumplings are wrapped.
How it is made
Shi Weifei (施卫飞), who has made bianshi in Fangqian for more than 20 years, told the Hangzhou paper Dushi Kuaibao (都市快报) that the wrapper is the key. It is made from the sweet potatoes of the local uplands: a wet sweet-potato starch dough is stirred with dry starch and boiling water. The mix must be neither too thin to roll nor so sticky that the wrapper tears, and getting it right is a matter of experience.
Where wontons take a raw filling, bianshi take a cooked one. Shi lists diced water bamboo (茭白), water chestnut, dried bamboo shoot, carrot and cured pork, with dried tofu and shredded egg, all stir-fried with seasoning. Tide News (潮新闻) adds pork, white radish and tofu as possible fillings. The wrapper is folded round the filling, the two ends are bent into a ring and pinched between thumb and forefinger, giving a dumpling that is high round the edge and low in the middle, like an ear.
How it is eaten
The dumplings are boiled for five or six minutes and ladled into a broth seasoned with salt, soy sauce, vinegar, spring onion and dried small shrimp; Tide News names soy sauce and lard as indispensable in the cooking. They are firm and springy to chew. Shi says Fangqian people eat bianshi all year, and that they must be on the table on New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and the Lantern Festival.
Where it comes from
Tide News places the dish's beginnings in Fangqian, in the Shifeng (始丰) river basin at the eastern edge of Pan'an. Pan'an News (磐安新闻网) describes Fangqian as the only township in Zhejiang named a 'Zhejiang snack town' (浙江小吃之乡), with its bianshi among the traditionally made foods it is known for. In January 2021 People's Daily Online (人民网) reported that the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs had named Pan'an Fangqian bianshi among the province's top 100 farmhouse snacks.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.