Wei Qing Radish

Wei Qing Radish

　　It is cylindrical in shape, generally about 20 cm long and roughly cm in diameter, with each weighing about jin. The whole radish is green in color, featuring a thin skin, tender flesh, crisp texture, sweet taste, and high water content. It can be eaten raw or used in cooked dishes, soups, and pickles. Especially when eaten raw, it has a unique flavor — crunchy, sweet, juicy, and without any grittiness, offering a delicious, light, and refreshing taste. It can also help relieve heat and quench thirst, dissolve phlegm, promote saliva production, aid digestion, and stimulate appetite.

　　　People in Tianjin love eating green radishes (Tianjin folks call radishes “luóba”), so much so that an old saying has been passed down: “Radish with hot tea will make doctors crawl the streets in anger.” Sichuan also has a similar proverb: “When radishes hit the market, imperial doctors go back home.” This one sounds a bit more refined but nowhere near as humorous or witty as the Tianjin version.

　　Wei Qing Radish belongs to the Brassicaceae family and has been cultivated since ancient times, with numerous varieties. It is a unique and renowned product of Tianjin. Alongside Tianjin Chinese Cabbage, Tianjin Yellow Chinese Chives, and Baodi Garlic, Wei Qing Radish is listed as one of the Four Famous Local Dishes of Tianjin. It enjoys nationwide fame and is sold around the world. The radish has a green skin with green flesh, fine-textured with streaks, crisp and tender with abundant juice, and so delicate it can break upon falling. When eaten, it tastes sweet with a mildly spicy kick, crispy, rich in flavor. In the words of Tianjin folks, it’s “neither too starchy nor too spicy — just a satisfying crunch in your mouth.” Since it’s much cheaper than pears or apples, it was even more popular than common fruits in the past, earning the folk nickname “rival to pears.” Back in the day, radish vendors in Beijing would hawk their wares with the cry: “Radishes that rival pears — too spicy? We’ll swap it!”

　　Old Tianjin also has a proverb about radishes: “The radishes of Xiao Liuzhuang have two flavors.” Legend has it that during the Ming Dynasty's Jiajing Emperor’s reign, the emperor had a favorite concubine who loved the lychees from the southern regions. Due to poor transportation and difficulty in preserving them, the Prime Minister Yan Song suggested uprooting entire lychee trees, loading them onto boats, and shipping them via the canal to Tianjin, then rushing them by horseback to the capital. The leftover soil from those lychee trees was dumped along the Haihe River bank at Xiao Liuzhuang. Over time, locals flattened the fertile soil accumulated over many years and planted Wei Qing Radishes. The resulting radishes were excellent in both color and taste, gaining fame almost immediately. From then on, it became a well-known saying among the people of Tianjin Wei: “The non-spicy, delicious radishes of Liuzhuang rival pears.” Even today, during autumn and winter, vendors selling green radishes can still be found daily at Liuzhuang Floating Bridge — though these are no longer from Xiao Liuzhuang, but from Geju instead.

　　Before Liuzhuang, the best radishes in Tianjin came from Yangcun in Wuqing. According to the Qing Dynasty poet Cui Xu’s “Tianjin Bai Yong,” it says: “Selling cries echo east to west in alleyways, outshining arrowheads and water chestnuts. Chew them to bits and your mouth turns red — Yangcun radishes rival pears.” After the 1930s, the area around Xiao Liuzhuang was turned into factories and residences, and the mantle was taken up by the large green radishes of Geju in southern Tianjin and Shawo in the western suburbs. The soil conditions there were better — “sandy land, canal water” — where they widely planted the improved Xiao Liuzhuang radish variety, maintaining the excellent quality of the radish and quickly earning a great reputation. Nowadays, the commonly seen large, sweet, and juicy Geju Seeds, Geju Eggs, and the Small Sprout variety from Shawo are all premium types of Wei Qing Radish. To this day, Tianjin selects some of its finest Wei Qing Radishes every year for exclusive export, selling widely in Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Southeast Asia, and other regions, making it a renowned specialty export product of Tianjin that enjoys immense popularity both domestically and abroad. Additionally, during the period before Chinese New Year, locals often pack boxes and carts full of Wei Qing Radishes to bring into the city as traditional, locally produced gifts for relatives and friends.

　　Wei Qing Radish can be eaten raw or cooked, in meat or vegetarian dishes, as a main or supplementary ingredient — truly a versatile and beloved food item. However, if eaten cooked, the requirements aren’t as strict; it just shouldn’t be pithy or have a burnt core. For cold dishes, such as sweet-and-sour shredded radish or fruit-juice-flavored shredded radish, the taste is pleasantly tangy and sweet. For soups, you can add dried shrimp or lamb meatballs. The famous crosstalk performer Hou Baolin once told a well-known “radish dialogue,” which included the line “lamb poached with radish served with dry rice” — a winter dish beloved by old Tianjin folks. In winter, my personal favorite is lamb poached with radish — the soup is thick and white, the meat tender and falling apart, the radish smooth and fresh, and the overall taste is incredibly delicious.