Have yourself a ball

It's a dish found in cuisines the world over, but in China, the meatball is an opportunity for the chef to stretch his imagination.

Meatballs are family favorites all over the world, but only the Chinese are so obsessed that they make "meatballs" with anything they can lay their hands on - beef, pork, fish, prawn, squid, mushroom and even tofu.

In a cuisine that boasts 5,000 years of history, the evolution of the Chinese meatball has been inevitable. What surprises food historians is that, compared with the Western version, which has stayed true to the original recipe throughout the centuries, the Chinese meatball comes in all sizes, flavors and textures.