When I talk about Nanjing spicy wontons, I mean the small, thin-skinned ones with just a whisper of filling inside. Strictly speaking, these aren’t unique to Nanjing. Shanghai has its own version cooked over burning kindling, Fujian calls them bianshi, Guangdong serves them as wonton. But what turned the Nanjing spicy wonton into a cultural icon isn’t the wonton itself.
It became famous through two things.
First, a 2005 dialect rap song called Drinking Wontons (喝馄饨). It was such a hit in Nanjing that out-of-towners learned the line “A yao la you a?” (“Want some chili oil?”) from it. Suddenly “drinking” was the only way to describe eating Nanjing wontons — because they’re so thin-skinned they slide down your throat. And chili oil went from a condiment on the table to the soul of the bowl.
Second, the rise of firewood-cooked wontons in Laomendong (Old South Gate) in recent years. The old-school method of burning real firewood gives the broth a smoky, rustic aroma. Paired with the grey brick and black tile alleys of Laomendong, it became a magnet for Instagram-style check-ins. These days you’ll see long lines outside those firewood wonton shops at almost any hour.
Back in the 1980s, Nanjing’s streets were filled with tiny eateries — just a few tables and chairs, nothing fancy. They served not only wontons but also fried bread sticks and potstickers. One I remember well sat at the intersection of Beiting Alley and Zhongshan East Road, near what is now the Nanjing Brocade Museum. Business was always brisk. It’s long been demolished, but I can still picture exactly where it stood.
The broth back then wasn’t always bone stock. Often it was just clear water with a bit of scallion and lard. The filling was a tiny joke of meat — the cook would dip a chopstick into the meat paste, barely smear it onto the wrapper, and pinch it shut. The trick was the spicy chili oil. That’s what made the whole thing work. A bowl cost about fifteen fen and came with fifteen or sixteen wontons. Fifteen fen wasn’t nothing for a kid back then, but spending it on a steaming bowl after school was pure happiness.
Honestly, today’s wontons taste better. The broth is richer, the filling more generous, the options more varied.
But some old-school Nanjingers insist the old ones were better. I think there are two reasons.
One is context. Back then life was simpler and food choices were limited. A bowl of clear broth with a smear of lard was genuinely satisfying. Now we’ve eaten so well that our tastes have grown demanding.
The other, more important reason — nostalgia. Lu Xun captured it perfectly in his story Village Opera:
“Truly, until this day, I have never again eaten beans as good as those I ate that night, nor have I ever seen such a fine opera as I did that night.”
That bowl of wontons wasn’t just wontons. It was the freedom after school, the few coins jingling in your pocket, the shopkeeper calling out “A yao la you a?” What we miss isn’t the taste. It’s the person we were when we ate it.