Ode to health that melts in the mouth

House of Long Life is a small eatery on a side street in an old and modest district of Shanghai. From the outside, it looks just like any other neighborhood restaurant with cheap-looking aluminum-framed glass doors opening to a steamy room cramped with tables and chairs.

Before noon, the place was already packed with the lunch crowd, and a long line of customers waited patiently outside for their turn.

In the open kitchen, the chefs were busy placing small, white dumplings into bamboo steam baskets, which were piled on each other in stacks above boiling water in big woks. When done, the baskets, with the steaming hot dumplings inside, were delivered straight to the tables.