Zhongtang Chajiao Fish-Paste Dumplings 中堂槎滘鱼包
Zhongtang Chajiao Fish-Paste Dumplings is featured among the local specialties of Guangdong.
Zhongtang Chajiao Fish-Paste Dumplings (中堂槎滘鱼包) are dumplings whose wrappers are rolled from mud-carp (鲮鱼) paste, filled with pork, Chinese sausage and mushroom and folded into the shape of a goldfish. They come from Chajiao village (槎滘村) in Zhongtang town (中堂镇), Dongguan (东莞), where they have been made for more than a hundred years.
How it is made
Only the back meat of mud carp weighing about 250 grams is used. The cook scrapes off the smoothest flesh, rubs it with salt and kneads and beats it by hand until it binds into a translucent, elastic paste called yuqing (鱼青); one jin (half a kilogram) of fish gives only 70 to 100 grams. The paste is rolled with a pin that locals call a chui (棰), turned more than ten times and pressed about 600 times, with starch dusted from a special starch bag, until it is as thin as xuan paper, about 0.01 centimetres.
The sheet is cut into equilateral triangles about 5 centimetres a side, filled with fresh pork, Chinese sausage (腊肠) and shiitake (冬菇), and folded into a goldfish with a head and a lively tail. The Yangcheng Evening News (羊城晚报) notes that a wrapper made only from mud carp, with no wheat flour, does not fall apart when simmered.
How it is eaten
The dumplings are cooked in clear broth, which shows off the fish and turns the soup sweet and rich; the dumplings are springy and crisp to the bite. They also go into hotpot or are steamed or fried, and the wrapper can also be made into fish-thread noodles (鱼丝面). Autumn and winter are the best time to eat them, as the dumplings use autumn mud carp, when the fish are fattest. A Dongguan saying holds that once you have eaten Chajiao fish dumplings, every other taste falls flat (食过槎滘鱼包，百味全无).
Where it comes from
Villagers once said the dumplings tasted as good as abalone and called them yubao (鱼鲍, 'fish abalone'), later simplified to the present name. In 2022 the Zhongtang Chajiao fish dumpling making technique entered Dongguan's sixth list of municipal intangible cultural heritage. According to the Zhongtang town culture service centre, nearby Zengcheng (增城), Mayong (麻涌), Wanjiang (万江) and Daojiao (道滘) later began making imitations. Chajiao village was founded around 1195, in the Southern Song, and lies 13 kilometres north-west of Guancheng (莞城), with the main stream of the Dong River (东江) to its north and across that water from Xintang (新塘) in Zengcheng.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.