Soup dumplings have black sesame filling, red bean paste filling, peanut filling, lotus seed paste filling, honey jujube filling, washing sand filling, ice slice filling, sumac filling, cherry filling, icing sugar filling, orange cake filling, rose filling, ham filling, walnut filling and so on. The flavors vary, some are glutinous and soft and smooth, some are sweet and cool, some are meaty and dry, and some are fruity and rich. There is also now a practice of having a bowl of soup dumplings with several fillings.

Eating soup dumplings is a traditional Han Chinese custom, especially prevalent in Jiangnan. There is a folk saying that "a year older after eating soup dumplings". Chen Zhiyou's poem "Tangyuan" says: "Every year, every family cooks on the winter solstice, and a year of potential add know nothing. The dumplings are sweet, smooth and refreshing, and the whole family is happy and drunk in the year." "Ningbo soup dumplings are a must-have food, a round dessert made of glutinous rice flour, and "round" means "reunion" and "success. "Round" means "reunion" and "complete", and eating soup dumplings at festival time symbolizes family harmony and good fortune, which is why soup dumplings are also called "floating yuanzi".

Soup dumplings in some places are specifically referred to without filling, cooked with water and sugar to eat the glutinous rice flour dumplings. Nowadays, most of them are made with fillings, and the flavors vary. Sweet filling soup dumplings itself has a sweet flavor, so the soup does not need to add sugar. If there is no filling small dumplings, soup can be replaced with sugar osmanthus, sweet wine, flower tea or cinnamon red dates soup, cinnamon ginger soup, the latter can have the effect of tonifying the body to get rid of cold.

Soup dumplings originated in the Song Dynasty. At that time, Mingzhou (now Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province), the rise of a novelty food, that is, with black sesame, lard as a filling, adding a little sugar, the outside of the glutinous rice flour rolled into a round, cooked, eaten sweet, soft, aftertaste. At the same time, the dumplings symbolize the family reunion, eating dumplings also means that in the new year reunion, so it is the first month of the 15th Lantern Festival essential food.