Pickled Cucumber

Pickled Cucumber

　　Yunlian pickles have long enjoyed a stellar reputation, and their flagship product is the pickled cucumber. These pickled cucumbers are handcrafted using tender cucumbers from the Wumeng Mountain Range in southern Sichuan and fresh red chili peppers from the highlands. They offer a crisp, tender, spicy, and sweet taste, with a savory, refreshing finish, and boast a unique flavor profile of numbness, spiciness, aroma, crispness, and freshness—each bite conjuring up a beautiful image in the mind; imagine a beautiful Yunlian girl plucking jade-like tender cucumbers amidst clear blue waters and verdant mountains, her delicate hands soaking and sun-drying the cucumbers...

　　Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the people of Yunlian have been pickling these cucumbers. Due to the mountainous terrain of Yunlian, which features extensive karst landforms, high elevations, and cold winter temperatures, vegetable cultivation is challenging. Observing the abundance of fruits and vegetables in summer—especially cucumbers, which are easy to grow and yield high outputs—locals would harvest the tender cucumbers, slice them into strips, and dry them under the sun. In winter, when vegetables were scarce, they would soak the dried cucumbers in cold water for a while and mix them with chili sauce for consumption. The result was a crispy, spicy, sweet, and fragrant delicacy that came to be known as pickled cucumber. In the past, caravans passing through Yunlian often carried “Yunlian Pickled Cucumbers” to eat on the road, so even back then, the pickled cucumbers were already famous along the ancient Southern Silk Road.

　　With the advent of reform and opening-up and a more vibrant economy, this traditional pickle began making its way from home kitchens to the market. Numerous brands emerged such as “Village Man,” “Fragrant Name,” “Granny,” and “Brother Hao,” becoming bestsellers both within and beyond the province, with some even exported to countries like the United States and Singapore. A plate of pickled cucumbers opens up a whole new world.