Cabbage still staple vegetable in Peking

Press, 16 November 1987, Page 41

Cabbage still staple vegetable in Peking

By KATHY WILHELM NZPA-AP Peking Pity the poor Peking resident who does not like cabbage. Every year in November, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the vegetable descend upon Peking by flatbed truck from nearby farms. Green mountains — some higher than the passers-by — rise from every corner and discarded leaves scatter over the footpaths and in the bicycle lanes, making slippery boobytraps for the unwary.

Local residents load up bicycle-pulled wagons or dangle bags of the stuff from their handlebars.

Soon smaller piles begin appearing on the balconies and stairs of high-rise apartments as people throughout northern China stock up on their number one favorite vegetable for the long cold winter ahead.

Some 250,000 tonnes of cabbage will be sold to the capital’s 5.8 million residents this month, according to municipal officials and ensuring it moves smoothly from farmer to truckie to market is not easy. Peking has set up a

special co-ordinating committee that runs 24 hours a day out of an office with a large wall chart showing the day-by-day cabbage flow, according to the official "China Daily” newspaper.

“There really is a tremendous amount of work,” it quoted the committee director, He Sanjin, as saying. Shopkeepers complained they were forced to work non-stop from early morning to late night to meet the public’s cabbage demand.

“The around-the-clock work robbed me of my sleep, though we get no extra money,” the paper quoted a salesman, Liu Tieping, as saying. Just a few years ago, cabbage was the only vegetable available in Peking during the winter because nothing else kept as well. Now, due to improved storage facilities and shipments from the warmer south, carrots, celery, peppers and other vegetables also can be bought. But cabbage remains the staple vegetable of choice because it is cheap and versatile and because people like it. It can be boiled or pickled, fried or

dried, put in dumplings or soup. It costs about six fen a kilogram (less than 4c a kilogram). One traditional recipe advises: “Put salt and cabbages into a jar, pour off the juice and pour boiling water in.”

The recipe writer said the cabbages would turn sour within two weeks and recommended they be added to mutton soup. “There is no single best way to cook it,” said a Peking resident. “There are so many ways. Most everybody likes it.” There is even something poetic about the sight of cabbage drying on a sunny day, according to an author from the Ching Dynasty. "On a rope under the eaves cabbage hanging.

“Warm sun in the clear winter sky shining,” he wrote.

Peking residents know their cabbage well. Experienced buyers report that early autumn cabbages contain too much water to store well and that the best tasting ones are those sold later in November.

But even early cabbage should not have so much moisture that it drips pud-

dies of water when put in the sun. One Peking housewife complained angrily when this happened to her cabbage, the "Peking Evening News” reported recently.

It turned out the farmer had been sprinkling his cabbages with water and freezing them so as to increase their weight and get more money for them. Nature sometimes unexpectedly freezes the cabbage with disastrous results. When a cold wave struck Peking in 1979, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cabbage being stored outside was blighted. One of the tasks of Peking’s cabbage commission is to ensure such disasters are not repeated. The “China Daily” said farmers and shops now kept a supply of thick quilts and blankets off hand for covering their cabbages should the temperature dip too low.

The commission has also arranged for the meteorological observatory to set up a cabbage hot line. Four times a day, anxious cabbage watchers can get updated weather reports.