China Popular Itineraries |
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Vegetables takes a significant position in Chinese diet, which can be seen in the shape of ancient Chinese character of jijin (hunger), meaning lack of food and vegetables.
In remote ages of China, vegetables were scarce. Among the 132 kinds of plants mentioned in the Odes, only around two dozens were vegetables, most of which are never consumed nowadays, such as soybean leaves. Only very few vegetables, for example, turnip, have been retained till now.
From the Warring States Period to the Han Dynasty, situation improved. But there were not many kinds of vegetables yet. The following five were the main vegetables consumed in the Han Dynasty:
Kui. (Malva verticillata) Its stalks and leaves could be used as vegeta-bles. Though it was regarded as "King of all vegetables" through many dynas-ties, people seldom ate it in the Ming Dynasty. It is still cultivated in Jiangxi, Hunan and Sichuan provinces, but no longer as essential as before.
Huo, the tender leaves of soybeans, though the main vegetable in ancient China, are not consumed as vegetable by people now, but as forage for live-stock.
Chinese onion, or jiaotou. Its bulbs were vegetables. With its bulbs usu-ally processed into pickles, it is now still widely planted in Guangxi, Hunan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces. The dry bulbs are also used as Chinese herbal medicine to cure pain in chest and diarrhea.
Spring onion. It is still very common now, but mainly as a seasoning or condiment. Fried eggs with spring onions is still a very popular dish in China.
Jiucai, or Chinese leek. Hotbed leek was cultivated as early as the Han Dynasty, and it was very popular by the Song Dynasty.
Apart from the five main vegetables mentioned above, there were some other native and nonnative vegetables in ancient China, mainly as follows:
Garlic. It was introduced from foreign countries in the Eastern Han Dy-nasty.
Turnip, a speciality of China, was extensively planted in ancient China and many superb varieties have been cultivated. There are also other varieties of turnip in western countries, but their values can not be compared with those in China.
From the Jin Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, new foreign vegetables were introduced into China: eggplant, first recorded in the Jin Dynasty, was of In-dian and Thai origin. White eggplant came to China from south Korea in the Tang Dynasty. Cucumber, also of Indian origin, was introduced to China a little later than the eggplant. Spinach entered China in the Tang Dynasty (647 A. D. ) from Nepal. As for pod vegetables, except that string beans were native to China, hyacinth beans have their origin in India and Indonesia, imported into China in the Southern and Northern dynasties; sword beans are native to India, introduced into China in the Tang Dynasty; lima beans, na-tive to America, came to China in the 16th century.
Since the Yuan Dynasty, some new varieties of vegetables entered China in succession. For instance, carrot, native to northern Europe was introduced into China from Iran in the Yuan Dynasty; American chili came to China inm the 16th century; in the early 18th century, tomatoes entered China through western Europe as an ornamental plant. It was not until the mid-19th century that it was cultivated as vegetable.
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