Several round white tangyuan float in a clear, pale soup in a white porcelain bowl, one cut open to show a jet-black sesame filling, with a white porcelain spoon resting in the bowl.
Ningbo lard tangyuan has a skin of water-milled glutinous rice flour around a filling of leaf lard, black sesame and sugar, and is boiled and eaten together with its cooking water. Ningbo tangyuan can be traced to Mingzhou in the Song dynasty, with no specific year given; a poem by Zhou Bida of the Southern Song mentions boiling floating dumplings on Lantern night, but concerns the dumpling type rather than specifically Ningbo lard tangyuan, and no dated text about that version was found in the sources listed. Gangyagou of Ningbo began as a stall beside the City God Temple in 1926.
What
Ningbo lard tangyuan is a dumpling with a skin of water-milled glutinous rice flour and a filling of minced leaf lard mixed with ground roasted black sesame and sugar; it is boiled and served with its cooking water.1,2,4,9
When
Ningbo tangyuan can be traced to Mingzhou in the Song dynasty, with no specific year given. A poem by Zhou Bida of the Southern Song mentions boiling floating dumplings on Lantern night, an early record of the dumpling type rather than specifically Ningbo lard tangyuan. A 2023 comparison finds the sweet sugar balls in Zhou Mi's Wulin Jiushi very close to Ningbo sesame tangyuan today. Gangyagou began in 1926 as a stall beside the City God Temple in Ningbo.1,2,3,4,9
Where
Ningbo, Zhejiang. Ningbo tangtuan is a well-known Jiangnan kind of tangyuan.6
How
Glutinous rice is soaked and ground into a slurry, hung in cloth for several hours and drained to a flour. Leaf lard is minced and mixed with ground roasted black sesame and sugar. The dumplings go into boiling water, a little cold water is added each time they float, and this is repeated until the skin turns glossy; a shop piece weighs about 20 g. Two home recipes differ slightly: one uses raw minced leaf lard, the other softened cooked lard, and their doughs take water in different ways.1,2,4,7,8,9
Why
Tangyuan are eaten at the Lantern Festival and at the winter solstice. They sink and then rise in the pot, which is why they were once called floating dumplings; a 2023 comparison likens them to the round moon in the sky.3,4,6,9
Impact and influence
Gangyagou began selling its tangyuan overseas on a large scale in 2020. An account updated in March 2026 still describes it as a long-established brand founded in 1926. The claim that its tangyuan craft entered Zhejiang's provincial intangible cultural heritage list in 2012 remains unverified: no official list was found in the sources provided, so it is not recorded here as a formal item.1,2,5
Legend has it that the founder of Gangyagou, nicknamed Jiang Agou, began by selling sweet dumplings from a stall beside the City God Temple in Ningbo. His nickname sounds like Gangyagou in the Ningbo dialect, so those three characters went on the sign. Accounts differ on how to write his given name, so it is left out here.
Told in: Told in Ningbo about the stall beside the City God Temple, found in one article and a Tide News report; it is an account of how a business got its name and not a documented record.
The Moon That Floats
The folk account is that tangyuan sink to the bottom of the pot and then slowly rise, so people called them floating dumplings and said they looked like a round moon hanging in the sky, just right for the full moon of the fifteenth day of the first lunar month.
Told in: A Lantern Festival account from the Ningbo area, found in a 2023 report and a Zhejiang Daily article, neither of which names a document.
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is how I make Ningbo lard tangyuan at home, simplified: I buy water-milled glutinous rice flour and use cooked lard in the filling instead of mincing raw leaf lard by hand. I looked at two home recipes, one with raw leaf lard and one with cooked lard, and their amounts differ, so the amounts below are my own choices at home. After the lard and sesame are mixed into a filling, I chill it until firm before wrapping.
Ingredients
Water-milled glutinous rice flour 200 g
Warm water about 160 g, added in several additions
Roasted black sesame seeds 60 g
White sugar 40 g
Cooked lard 40 g, softened
Sweet osmanthus 1 tablespoon, optional
Steps
If the sesame seeds are raw, toast them in a dry pan over low heat until fragrant and let them cool. Put them with the sugar in a thick food bag and crush them to a fine powder with a rolling pin.
Mix in the softened lard and knead to one lump. Chill it in the refrigerator until firm, then take it out and divide it into about 24 balls of roughly 6 g each.
Put the flour in a bowl, add the warm water in several additions and knead to a smooth dough that does not crack.
Divide the dough into 24 pieces of about 15 g, pinch each into a small cup, put in one ball of filling, close the opening and roll round.
Bring a large pot of water to the boil, turn to medium heat and add the dumplings, nudging them with the back of a spoon so they do not stick to the bottom. When they float, add a small half bowl of cold water and wait until they float again; repeat about three times, until the skin is glossy and slightly translucent.
Spoon them into bowls with a little of the cooking water and, if you like, drizzle with sweet osmanthus.
Tips
I keep the water at a gentle boil over medium heat rather than a hard boil, because I find a hard boil tears the skins.
Chill the filling until it is firm before wrapping, because a soft filling leaks as you close the dumplings; that is my own way of doing it.
