Grandma's Dumplings · Showcase

The work

A dumpling-folding tutor Wen built for his mom, not himself.

Wen's mom never learned to fold dumplings the way his grandma does. Wen asked his grandma to teach him, wrote down every step exactly the way she said it (including the parts that don't translate cleanly into English), and turned it into a web app. Then he gave the app to his mom.

The first time she used it, his grandma watched over her shoulder, and when she saw that the pleats were right, his grandma started crying. Wen wasn't in the room. He was in the kitchen on purpose so they could have the moment without him there.

The thing itself · interactive

Step through it the way Wen's mom did.

This is Wen's actual page, lightly trimmed. Click the arrows.

外婆的饺子 · Grandma's Dumplings Step 1 of 7

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He built this for his mom, not himself. The first time she used it, his grandma cried watching her fold the dumplings right. I think about this project more than he knows. It's a twelve-year-old turning two generations of silence — between a grandmother whose language didn't travel and a mother who didn't have the teacher she needed — into a working piece of software. That's not a Code Club assignment. That's a repair. — Prof. Weining Zhang, curator