Before the summer vacation, our school held a dumpling-making activity.

When it was the turn of our class, we were told to wait in the dining hall. We divided our class into five dumpling-making groups and took with us the ingredients, such as wrappers, filling, flour and water.

We carefully put the filling onto the wrappers, daubed the wrapper margin with water, folded the wrappers in a crescent shape, and sealed them.

Eventually, we could look with pride upon our own dumplings — jiaozi. One classmate crammed a coin into a wrapper before sealing it up. He said that receiving that dumpling would be a sign of good luck.

But there was a problem — some classmates did not know how to make dumplings. The dumplings they made were in all sorts of strange shapes: Some had wide open “mouths,” some had huge “stomachs,” and some had a mass of “bruises.” Some students were mischievous to rub filling on each other’s faces.

We carried the lovely dumplings to the stoves in great expectation and excitement. When the cooks served the boiled dumplings to us, the dining hall was full of joy.