The origins of certain dishes usually include some colourful stories, but none so involved and complicated as Chinese dishes. I believe this is because the story ends up evolving into something no longer about food, but about the Chinese identity. Here are two examples that my Poppa never fails to tell me when we eat these foods (and we eat them often):

Jok/Congee: This dish is essentially rice porridge/gruel and it is usually eaten with these fried breadsticks, called yow-ja-qin. The story in revolves around these breadsticks.

There was once a great general named Yue Fei, who the Chinese people very much loved. There was also an upper statesman, Qin Hui, who was very corrupt - and obviously very evil. He also had a wife who was, correspondingly, just as evil. For reasons not quite elucidated in the story, Qin had Yue Fei arrested and had him executed. Unfortunately, Yue Fei also had a son who was a great general, and Qin Hui had him arrested and executed with his father.

This made the people furious, but they knew that they were unable to retaliate in any physical manner, so they turned to food. They made sticks of dough and joined them together, then fried them in oil. The name of these sticks yow-ja-qin literally means deep-fried-qin, and the sticks were supposed to represent Qin Hui and his wife being boiled alive in hot oil, again and again.

Jung: Sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and stuffed with salty egg, pork, chinese sausage and beans.

There was another beloved Chinese man who felt helpless against a corrupt and evil Chinese statesman. He felt that there was no way to go on with his life if he could not help his people, so he through himself into the river.

Again, the people were distraught, and rushed to the river to find his body. The river was full of fish and sharks, and to keep them from eating his body, they threw jung into the water. His body was never found, and the story (or rather, my Poppa) never actually explains why jung is filled the way it is.

As a side note, they were also racing to find his body in long boats and used drums to scare away the fish....and this is where the dragon boat races came from (at least, in part).

So the next time you're eating dim sum, think about all the epic stories each and every one of those dumplings has...