The History of Dim Sum: From Teahouse to Tick Sheet

Dim sum, as most people now know it, grew out of the teahouse culture of Guangzhou in southern China. Humble tea huts serving travellers and workers in the 19th century gave way to grand, multi-storey teahouses by the early 1900s; Hong Kong refined the form in the 20th century; Cantonese emigrants carried it around the world; and in recent decades the rolling cart has largely given way to the paper tick sheet. Older stories reach back much further, but they are best told as legend.

The Silk Road story: a legend worth knowing

Ask about the origins of dim sum and you will often hear a romantic tale. Travellers on the ancient trade routes of China, the story goes, would stop at roadside teahouses to rest, and those teahouses began offering small snacks to go with the tea. Over centuries, the custom of tea with little bites spread south.

It is a lovely image, and tea drinking does have an ancient history across China. But there is little firm evidence connecting Silk Road rest stops directly to the Cantonese dim sum we eat today. It is fairer to say that pairing tea with snacks is very old and widespread, and that the specific meal called yum cha took shape much later and much further south.

The word itself is old. 點心 (dím sām) literally means something like "touch the heart", and versions of the term appear in Chinese writing by the Song dynasty, when it referred broadly to light snacks eaten between meals. Several stories claim to explain the name; accounts differ, and none can be confirmed.

Guangzhou: from tea huts to teahouses

The documented story of yum cha begins in Guangzhou, long one of China's great trading ports. By the mid-to-late 1800s, the city had simple tea stalls often remembered as 二厘館 (yih lèih gún), "two-li houses", after the tiny copper sum said to have been charged for tea. They were plain places: wooden benches, a pot of tea, a few simple snacks, a spot for labourers and traders to rest and talk.

Over time these grew into 茶居 (chàh gēui), tea dwellings, and then into 茶樓 (chàh làuh), the multi-storey teahouses that defined Guangzhou in the late Qing and early Republican years. These were places of real ambition: high ceilings, carved woodwork, private rooms upstairs, and kitchens that competed on the variety and refinement of their dim sum. Teahouses advertised their dishes, and cooks developed many of the forms still familiar today, from thin-skinned shrimp dumplings to fluffy steamed buns.

It was in this world that the phrase 一盅兩件 (yāt jūng léuhng gihn), one cup of tea and two pieces of dim sum, became shorthand for the ritual. A regular might spend a whole morning over a single lidded cup of tea and a couple of dishes, reading a newspaper or doing business. Guangzhou teahouses also came to serve tea at different times of day, so that people spoke of morning, afternoon and evening tea.

Hong Kong: the golden age

In the 20th century, and especially after waves of migration from Guangdong in the 1940s and 1950s, Hong Kong became the second great home of yum cha. Teahouses and later large restaurants with cavernous dining rooms became central to city life. Families gathered there on weekends, businessmen met there on weekdays, and older men famously brought their caged songbirds along to morning tea.

Hong Kong kitchens kept refining the repertoire. Restaurants competed on novelty as well as tradition, and the menu grew to include more seafood, more elaborate pastries and, eventually, playful modern creations alongside the classics. For many people around the world, the image of dim sum that they carry, a huge, bustling room full of round tables and steaming baskets, is a Hong Kong image.

Across the world with Cantonese emigrants

Cantonese communities abroad carried yum cha with them, from San Francisco and Sydney to London and Vancouver. In each city, the custom adapted to local life while keeping its core: tea first, many small dishes, shared at a round table, ideally on a weekend morning with family.

In Metro Vancouver, waves of immigration from Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s brought experienced cooks and a large, discerning audience, and weekend dim sum became part of the region's rhythm. Our piece on Vancouver dim sum tells that story in more detail.

From carts to tick sheets

For decades, dim sum was ordered by flagging down servers pushing steam carts between the tables, each loaded with baskets. Watching what rolled past, lifting lids and pointing was part of the fun.

In recent decades, many restaurants in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and overseas have moved to paper order sheets instead. The reasons are practical. Dishes made to order arrive hotter and fresher, kitchens waste less food, and guests no longer have to wait for the one cart carrying the dish they want. Carts still survive in some places, and many people remember them fondly, but the tick sheet is now the common way to order.

The ritual itself has changed less than the logistics. You still choose a tea, you still share everything from the middle of the table, and you still pour for others first.

Dim sum history at Neptune Palace

At Neptune Palace, we take orders the modern way: on paper tick sheets, with every dish listed by its code in Chinese and English. Behind that sheet is the long teahouse tradition. Our menu still opens with the classics that Cantonese teahouses made famous, such as Neptune Shrimp Dumplings (Har Gow), Shrimp & Pork Siu Mai with Flying Fish Roe and Steamed BBQ Pork Buns, alongside newer creations such as the Piggy-Shaped Coconut Milk Jelly.

Dim sum is served daily from the morning until 3pm at our Vancouver location in Marine Gateway and our Burnaby location in The Amazing Brentwood. Order a pot of tea, start with two pieces, and you will be taking part in a custom more than a century in the making.

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