Shanxi Pickled Vegetables

Shanxi Pickled Vegetables

　　Shanxi pickled vegetables are made using fermentation or sauce-based methods. The fermented ones are called suancai (sour vegetables); in the Rites of Zhou they were referred to as “zu” or “ji” (chopped and pickled). The Northern Wei Dynasty’s Qimin Yaoshu recorded various methods for pickling sour vegetables, a tradition that continues among the people of Shanxi. In the rural areas of southern Shanxi, it is customary to chop radish leaves, grate white radishes, and tightly pack layers of leaves and shreds into a jar, where they ferment slowly under the gentle sunlight under the eaves and the cold of light and heavy snow until the Winter Solstice, when they are ready to eat. Radish suancai aids digestion, cuts greasiness, and regulates the spleen and stomach. In hard times, it was simply mixed with cornbread; when conditions improved, it might be stir-fried with beef and served with steamed buns, or even made into dumplings, embodying memories of life transitioning from bitterness to sweetness.

　　 In northern Shanxi, long Chinese cabbage is commonly used for making suancai. Cabbage, known in ancient times as “song,” is considered one of the finest vegetables, as noted in the Nan Shi: “Early spring leeks and late autumn song.” Though delicious, cabbage is not easy to preserve over winter. So the people of Datong developed a dish called suwo cai (sour pit cabbage): remove yellow leaves, wash clean, blanch in boiling water, cool, then layer into a jar, sprinkle with Sichuan peppercorns, red chili peppers, fennel seeds, salt, and pour in cooled boiled water. Press down with clean stones and let it ferment in a cool place for two months before eating—sweet, sour, refreshing, and affordable. It goes especially well when poached with pork or used to cook carp, resulting in delicious dishes. Farmers in northern Shanxi also pickle a mixed vegetable suancai, unintentionally similar to those in France or Germany, using cabbage as the base. Lacking juniper berries, they mix in shredded celery and carrots, which still results in a tasty dish. In French cuisine, the pickled cabbage shreds are typically served with smoked pig’s trotters, eaten with silverware. But northern Shanxi farmers simply pluck out a few juicy pieces with their chopsticks, eat them with millet porridge or potatoes, and dig in heartily—a rustic and bold style reminiscent of northern Shanxi opera.

　　 In central Shanxi, the practice of pickling black bean leaves in Pingding traces back to Emperor Yao’s time with his “soup of wild herbs” (from China’s Imperial Cuisine Through the Ages), and has endured through years of hardship, as described in the Qing Dynasty poem “Ode to Bean Leaves”: “Holding the jar, I get by day to day, cooking bean leaf soup to tide us through the year.” This tradition has become deeply intertwined with local food culture and nostalgia. After autumn harvest, preparing fermented black bean leaf suancai for winter is an essential task: pick the leaves, shred them, blanch, cool in water, press dry with rocks in a basket, then pack tightly into a jar, add water and rice broth, and let it ferment slowly. This kind of pickled black bean leaf suancai can be stir-fried or boiled and is believed to reduce internal heat and inflammation. Locals enjoy not only the dish itself but also the stories and poetry surrounding it.

　　 If pickled vegetables represent ancient, time-tested winter storage skills, then sauce-preserved vegetables have evolved into a refined culinary art. Shanxi has a long history of making sauces—Taiyuan soy sauce, Quwo flour sauce, and Xiangyuan dark sauce were once famous, laying the foundation for the development of sauce-preserved vegetables. Take Datong’s hongsi cai (red-thread vegetable), originally called “shixiang cai” (ten-flavor vegetable), a traditional product of the renowned Qingheyuan Sauce Workshop. Each autumn, the shop peels and washes high-quality kohlrabi, cuts them diagonally into quarters, layers them with salt in a pool, and lets them cure for six months. Then the pieces are taken out, desalted, cut into shreds, and soaked in sweet flour sauce for 15 days. Finally, they’re mixed with white liquor, yellow wine, and fresh ginger before becoming a brightly colored, crisp, tender, salty-sweet, and aromatic side dish.

　　 Another Shanxi sauce-preserved vegetable is jiaocu si (stirred vinegar shreds) from central Shanxi, said to date back to the Ming Dynasty. The method involves washing white radish, cutting it into chopstick-thick strips, drying them in the sun to remove moisture, then steaming and cooling them before mixing with soy sauce and vinegar and sealing them in a jar for half a year. Jiaocu si is reddish-brown, sweet and sour, with a tender yet slightly chewy texture. Paired with a bowl of fine noodles, it both stimulates the appetite and aids digestion. Among Shanxi pickled vegetables, the most famous is linji suyu gua (sauce-preserved jade melon) from Linxian in southern Shanxi, which won a gold medal at the Panama Expo in 1915. Made from jade melon and flour sauce and cured for half a year, this crispy and refreshing preserved vegetable was once a bestseller domestically and abroad, even exported to Japan and Southeast Asia. However, when Sichuan pickled mustard tuber rose to become one of the world’s three most famous pickled vegetables, sauce-preserved jade melon faded from the market—a true pity for Shanxi. Even old-time Shanxi sauce shops like Liubiju and Wanxinhe, though now rooted in Beijing and Tongguan, still shine with their iconic brands.

　　 Time may obscure many traditions, but Shanxi’s pickled vegetables are making a comeback in the cultural wave of returning to simplicity. Take Wen Jianfeng, a descendant of Wen Tianxiang, who opened a Chinese restaurant in the UK and struck up a friendship—and inherited millions—with a wealthy widow over a plate of Chinese pickled vegetables, a decades-long “pickled-vegetable-mediated” bond of respect. This shows how pickled vegetables, like the “beloved one across the water,” evoke nostalgia in the older generation, offer a taste of simple fashion to the young, and serve as inspiration for those striving in life—like Fan Zhongyan’s “broken pickles and thin porridge” or Cao Xueqin’s “biting into sour pickles in winter.”

　　 As with any finely crafted dish, there’s always a rich story behind the preserving. Truly, we can find the essence of pickled vegetables in the Song Dynasty poet Zhu Dunru’s poem “Zhaozhongcuo”: “The old scholar’s craving is a sickness hard to cure. Coarse rice suffices for morning meals. He grows his own cabbage in the garden, pickles it yellow in his daily pot. Chives finely chopped, sesame oil simmered slow, noodles like silk drawn. A cup or two, morning or night, does no harm—no need to chase the nine-turn elixirs of the immortals.”