One bowl with two pieces () is a term that has long been in the vernacular of

Hong Kong tea culture The tea-drinking habits of Hong Kong residents derive from Chinese tea culture, primarily the Cantonese traditions such as yum cha. Because of Hong Kong's period as a British colony, Hong Kong tea culture is distinct from the tea culture of the ...

, meaning a bowl of

tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of '' Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of south-western China and nor ...

with two "delicacies to complement the tea", i.e. dim sum. In

Cantonese restaurant A Cantonese restaurant is a type of Chinese restaurant that originated in Southern China. This style of restaurant has rapidly become common in Hong Kong. History Some of the earliest restaurants in colonial Hong Kong were influenced by Canton ...

s of the past, tea was not offered in a present-day teapot but in a bowl. The dim sum was not bite-sized. Instead, quite a number of them were simply big buns, such that two of them easily filled up one's stomach. An example is chicken ball dai bao (雞球大包. lit. ''Chicken Ball Big Bun'', meaning a bun with chicken filling). In modern terms, the "two pieces" normally refers to ''

har gow Har gow ( zh, c=蝦餃, p=xiājiǎo, j=haa1 gaau2, l=shrimp jiao), also anglicized as ha gow, hau kau, or ha kao, is a traditional Cantonese dumpling served as dim sum.Hsiung, Deh-Ta. Simonds, Nina. Lowe, Jason. 005(2005). The food of China: a ...

'' (蝦餃) and ''

shumai ''Shumai'' ( zh, s=烧卖, t=燒賣, p=shāomài, cy=sīu-máai, poj=sio-māi) is a type of traditional Chinese dumpling made of ground pork. In Cantonese cuisine, it is usually served as a dim sum snack. In addition to accompanying the Chin ...

'' (燒賣). The concept has been influenced by the "bite-sized trend".

References

Chinese tea culture Culture of Hong Kong Hong Kong cuisine Restaurant terminology {{China-cuisine-stub