Chuantongmianshi Making Craftsmanship

Ⅷ-160Traditional CraftsmanshipJiading, ShanghaiBatch 4 (2014)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

This traditional pasta-making craft originated in Nanxiang Town, Jiading District, Shanghai, later developed in the Chenghuang Temple (City God Temple) area of Shanghai, and now spreads throughout Shanghai and the Jiangnan region. In 1871, Huang Mingxian, owner of the Rihuaxuan snack shop in Nanxiang Town, improved the popular local large-meat mantou by "emphasizing the filling and thinning the wrapper, replacing large with small"—this marks the earliest form of the Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou craft. In 1900, a Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou shop opened at the Chenghuang Temple in Shanghai, and from then on Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou became widely renowned. Since then, the Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou craft has been continuously transmitted; standards and specifications were formulated in 2000.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

In Shanghai dialect, the colloquial term "xiaolong mantou" does not refer to the steamed buns known in northern China as "mantou," but rather to filled buns (baozi). Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou is celebrated for its thin wrapper, large filling, abundant broth, and elegant shape. It uses unleavened refined flour for the wrapper, leg meat as filling, and is seasoned with ingredients such as aspic. Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou represents classic old-Shanghai snacks. Its main variety is fresh-meat xiaolong, and in recent years crab-roe, shrimp, dried-scallop, and pickled-mustard xiaolong have also been developed. The Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou craft is highly exacting: its selection of ingredients, recipes, mixing, and even dough-kneading and rolling have particular secrets, with clear specification standards in the workmanship. First is the filling, made primarily from front-leg pork supplied under a fixed sourcing arrangement, with a fat-to-lean ratio of 3:7, combined with ten auxiliary ingredients—the filling is a secret recipe. Second is the wrapper: top-grade refined white flour is mixed with water into dough and shaped by hand. Third is the wrapping skill: each xiaolong wrapper is 1.5 mm thick and weighs 8 g, enclosing 16 g of meat filling, yielding a finished product 2.5 cm in diameter with 18 pleats. Last is steaming in the bamboo basket, with strict control of temperature and time—adjusting the basket height from 3 to 10 tiers according to temperature—so that the dumplings emerge crystal-clear and translucent. Over more than 140 years, six generations of inheritors have carried the Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou craft forward through master-apprentice transmission.

Rolling the 1.5 mm skin

Fine flour dough is rolled by hand without fermentation into a 1.5 mm, 8-gram skin holding 16 grams of meat in eighteen pleats.

The three-to-seven filling

The filling is set three parts fat to seven lean of foreleg pork, blended with ten seasonings to hold up under a thin skin.

Setting jelly into the filling

Pig-skin jelly melts into broth inside the steamer, which is where the soupiness of these small dumplings comes from.

Controlled steaming

Steaming is strictly temperature- and time-controlled, with the height of the stacked trays adjusted across three to ten levels.

The Rihuaxuan reform of 1871

In 1871 Huang Mingxian of Rihuaxuan lightened the local bun and shrank it, creating the earliest form; a city-god-temple shop opened in 1900 and spread the name.

Li Jiangang's standards

Inheritor Li Jiangang, who began in 1975, drew up standards and specifications for the craft and later founded a workshop and teaching classes.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

As one of the representatives of Shanghai's culinary culture, Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou is delicate and tiny, with a beautiful appearance, reflecting the graceful regional character of Jiangnan's rivers and hills and the refined eating habits of the Jiangnan people.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou is not only a household name in Shanghai but also a precious culinary cultural heritage of the Jiangnan region, possessing considerable social, cultural, and economic value. Li Jiangang (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): male, Han ethnicity, born in March 1958, from Shanghai. A representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item "Traditional Pasta-Making Craft (Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou Craft)." Senior technician of Chinese-style pastry. He began learning the Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou craft in 1975 and became general manager of Shanghai Guyiyuan Xiaolong Food Co., Ltd. in 2004. He formulated the standards and specifications for the Nanxiang Xiaolong craft. This not only gave the xiaolong mantou a stable texture but also raised production volume. In 2012 he founded the Li Jiangang Studio and opened training classes at Shanghai Dazhong Industrial School, Shanghai Tourism and Commerce School, and Nanxiang Guyiyuan Primary School to train students. In 2002 he led a team to the 4th China Cooking World Competition organized by the World Federation of Chinese Catering Societies and won a gold award. In 2012 he received the China Gold Chef Award for Culinary Skill Innovation from the China Cuisine Association.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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