The best xiaolongbao in Shanghai: where to eat soup dumplings in China’s biggest city

Legend has it that Huang Mingxian, owner of a snack shop and bakery in the village of Nanxiang, now part of Shanghai, set out to reimagine the meat-filled steamed buns he and his competi­tors were selling.

Travelling around Jiangsu province in search of inspiration, he discov­ered the soup-filled buns of Wuxi and Huaian, and thought up a few modifications. The result – golf ball-sized morsels of pork and hot soup encased in thin but sturdy dough – became Nanxiang-style xiaolongbao (“little steamer buns”).

That was way back, in the 19th century. Today, the site of Huang’s shop, in a corner of Nanxiang’s classical Guyi Garden, is packed with devotees who, like me, have come to pay their respects at the birthplace of the Shanghainese soup dumpling.