Mantou (), often referred to as Chinese steamed bun, is a white and soft type of steamed bread or bun popular in northern China. Folk etymology connects the name mantou to a tale about Zhuge Liang. Description Mantou are typically eaten as a staple food in northern parts of China where wheat, rather than rice, is grown. They are made with milled wheat flour, water and leavening agents. In size and texture, they range from , soft and fluffy in the most elegant restaurants, to over , firm and dense for the working man's lunch. As white flour, being more heavily processed, was once more expensive, white mantou were something of a luxury in preindustrial China. Traditionally, mantou, bing, and wheat noodles were the staple carbohydrates of the northern Chinese diet, analogous to rice, which forms the mainstay of the southern Chinese diet. They are also known in the south, but are often served as street food or a restaurant dish, rather than as a staple or home cooking. Restaurant mantou are often smaller and more delicate and can be further manipulated, for example, by deep frying and dipping in sweetened condensed milk. Colors and/or flavors may be added with other ingredients from brown sugar to food coloring in mantou making, often reserved for special occasions, when they are even kneaded into various shapes in Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Shandong. Precooked mantou are commonly sold in the frozen section of Asian supermarkets, ready for preparation by steaming or heating in the microwave oven. A similar food, but with a savory or sweet filling inside, is baozi. Mantou is the older word, and in some regions (such as the Jiangnan region of China, and Korea) mantou (or the equivalent local reading of the word) can be used to indicate both the filled and unfilled buns, while in Japan the equivalent local reading of the Chinese word (manjū) refers only to filled buns. Etymology and history Mantou may have originated in the Qin State of the Zhou Dynasty during the reign of King Zhaoxiang (307 BCE – 250 BCE). Mantou as well as other wheat derived foodstuffs such as noodles, Shaobing and Baozi became popular during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 206 CE) and collectively were known as ; mantou was distinguished as or . During the Western Jin dynasty (265–316 CE), Shu Xi () wrote about steamed cakes () in his