Lion's head meatballs are from Huaiyang cooking in eastern China, and the name comes from their size: four enormous pork meatballs, each one supposedly resembling a lion's head with the cabbage around it as the mane.
The texture is the point. Mixing the mince in one direction with a little cold water makes it bind into something springy and light rather than dense, and the long gentle simmer keeps them tender. Do not let the pot boil.
