--- title: Meet The Organizers Campaigning For a Dumpling Emoji description: It might soon be possible to create your own emoji canonical: https://time.com/4187017/dumpling-emoji/ author: NBC News article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-20T16:57:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:28:58.916Z og:title: Meet the Grassroots Organizers Campaigning for a Dumpling Emoji og:description: It might soon be possible to create your own emoji og:url: https://time.com/4187017/dumpling-emoji/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Meet the Grassroots Organizers Campaigning for a Dumpling Emoji twitter:description: It might soon be possible to create your own emoji twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Meet The Grassroots Organizers Campaigning For a Dumpling Emoji by [Charles Lam / NBC News](https://time.com/author/nbc-news/) ## Charles Lam / NBC News Jan 20, 2016 4:57 PM UTC by [Charles Lam / NBC News](https://time.com/author/nbc-news/) ## Charles Lam / NBC News Jan 20, 2016 4:57 PM UTC When Yiying Lu and Jennifer 8\. Lee reconnected in San Francisco last year, there was a problem: Lee had invited Lu over for dumplings, and Lu wanted to express her joy using an emoji — colorful emoticon-like images built into phones, websites, and computers — only to discover that there wasn’t an emoji for dumplings. “She was sending me pictures of all the dumplings she was cooking,” Lu told NBC News. “I was like, ‘fried dumplings, yum.’ I tried to send her an emoji back and realized there wasn’t one.” The omission inspired the two. [_Read the rest of this story from our partners at NBC News_](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/introducing-dumpling-emoji-more-open-emoji-nomination-process-n500056) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4187017/dumpling-emoji/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4187017/dumpling-emoji/"},"headline":"Meet The Grassroots Organizers Campaigning For a Dumpling Emoji","datePublished":"2016-01-20T16:57:23.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:28:58.916Z","description":"It might soon be possible to create your own emoji","url":"https://time.com/4187017/dumpling-emoji/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Internet","Bizarre","Tech","campaign","emoji","emojis","apple iphone"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charles Lam / NBC News"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4187017/dumpling-emoji/","name":"Meet The Grassroots Organizers Campaigning For a Dumpling Emoji"}}]}] ```