Yum cha (simplified Chinese: 饮茶; traditional Chinese: 飲茶), is a Chinese-style morning or afternoon tea, which involves drinking Chinese tea and eating dim sum dishes. Yum cha in Cantonese literally means "drink tea". Dim sum (点心 or 點心) refers to the wide range of small dishes, whereas yum cha refers to the entire meal (including tea). - Wikipedia says it best
In case, you haven't realised, I'm ethnically Chinese, but effectively bilingual (or at least I like to think so, in English and Mandarin). Yet Chinese as a language continues to baffle me till this day - it can be written in two ways (simplified or traditional) and read differently according to dialects like Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien (I'm Hokkien, by the way). There is afterall, a Chinese saying that goes '十里不同音' (shi li bu tong yin) which illustrates how a short distance (of ten 'li') leads to a different accent or reading of the exact same character. I say, at least the character is written in generally the same way (think about how far the Japanese language has evolved)!
Like how 'the best things come in small packages', the Cantonese dim sum come in small sweet or savoury servings, and can be steamed (placed in bamboo baskets and pushed around in steam carts) or fried, washed down with a fine pot of Chinese tea.
Here's an introduction of some classic dim sum dishes (where possible, I have included the various names in simplified Chinese characters, and its Mandarin pronounciation since my Cantonese is really bare) from my previous Hong Kong trip, and a very recent dim sum buffet at Peach Garden (a restuarant in Singapore)
小笼包 (xiao long bao in Mandarin) - usually with pork filling and really good soup (yes, soup!) which I really like to drink up
猪肠粉 (zhu chang fen in Mandarin or cheong fan in Cantonese) - interestingly named after pig intestines, but is actually made of rice, and can be filled with shrimp, pork, beef or vegetables, served with sweet soy sauce
粥 (zhou in Mandarin) - congee or porridge which is basically watered down rice, cooked into a paste, which can come in different flavors (e.g. century egg (preserved egg, but probably not as long as for 100 years), shredded chicken, or fish)
Which may be topped with 油条 (you tiao in Mandarin, which are fried dough fritters)
烧麦 (shao mai in Mandarin or siew mai in Cantonese) - shrimp with pork
Another variation
虾饺 (xia jiao in Mandarin, hargow in Cantonese) - prawn wrapped in a translucent skin (eat it while its hot or the skin hardens)
萝卜糕 (luo bo gao in Mandarin or lo bak goh in Cantonese) - turnip or radish cake
锅贴 (guo tie in Mandarin) - pan-fried dumplings with meat filling
Pork Ribs
凤爪 (feng zhua in Mandarin) - Phoenix Claws, otherwise known as Chicken Feet
Other variations of dim sum are really up to the chef's skills or creativity:
Fried Food - It's really hard to go wrong with fried food, and here are some: (from top) spring rolls, fried wantons (or dumplings), yam puffs (I coined this myself), cheese balls (with more shrimp than cheese), potato puff, seaweed prawn roll - not classic dim sum dishes per se (at least not to me)
Desserts: egg tarts (蛋挞, dan ta), sesame puffs, pineapple tarts (凤梨酥, feng li su)
Cold desserts (Mango Sago Pudding) or soup (an eclectic concoction)
You can't say you've been to the predominantly Cantonese Hong Kong (or the Guangzhou region in China) until you've had a late morning dose of 点心 (dim sum in Cantonese, or dian xin in Mandarin) or 饮茶 (yum cha in Cantonese or yin cha in Mandarin) at a Hong Kong-style cafe or cha chan ting (茶餐厅).
Unfortunately, the Cantonese dishes are probably non-Halal, because pork features quite prominently in the dishes. However, there are Halal restaurants in Singapore that do serve dim sum, not as good, but it's hard to find good non-Halal dim sum anyway.
Oh, and Hong Kong's Tim Ho Wan (添好运, or tian hao yun in Mandarin), 'the cheapest one-star Michelin restaurant in the world', is opening shop in Singapore come mid-March. I'm just saying.
Lastly, to answer 'Do you dim sum or yum cha?', a better option would be 'yum cha' (an action or activity), since dim sum really just refers to the small dishes when you yum cha.
