Steamed buns were invented by Zhuge Liang. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms tells the story of Zhuge Liang's seven captures of Meng Huo, and after pacifying the Southern Barbarians, he crossed the river and was blocked by the ghosts of those killed in battle. Facing this scene, Zhuge Liang was very anxious. After much deliberation, he had no choice but to offer sacrifices to the River God, asking God to bless and punish demons and protect living beings. Zhuge Liang could not bear to use human heads as a sacrifice, so he invented steamed buns as a substitute. So he ordered the sheep and pigs to be killed, rolled into dough, and thrown into the water as an offering. This is the origin of "steamed buns".

Names in various places

In China, in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai regions, steamed buns with fillings and no soup are still called "mantou", while those without fillings are called "white flour steamed buns". And "bao" means soup. Such as Suzhou soup dumplings. This is different from the north. In northern dialect, those with fillings are called "baozi" and those without fillings are called "mantou". There are no steamed buns with soup in the north. See the table below for detailed titles.

Other names

The name of steamed buns is still very confusing. For example, those in the north without stuffing are called "momo", "juanzi", and some are also called "baozi". In the south, those with fillings are also called "miandouzi" or "soup dumplings". No matter what kind of steamed buns there are today, whether stuffed or not, they are actually far away from the steamed buns created by Zhuge Liang. The character for steamed buns was originally written as "[the character for man was changed to square]". Lu Zhan's "Sacrifice Method": "The Chun Temple uses [the character Man is changed to square] head cakes."

Looking at "Yin Hua Lu" by Zhao Lin of the Tang Dynasty, there is another saying: "Steamed buns are originally Shu delicacies. It is said that Zhuge Liang made them with meat noodles like human heads when he was conquering the south. It is popularly known as 'Steamed Buns' I don't know what the pronunciation and meaning of the word was at that time, but it was the same as "deception". Kong Ming and Ma Su planned to conquer the south, and there was a theory of attacking Menghuo. , this is how the world explains it.