Chinese cabbage in the south is imported from the north, and its varieties include Wujinbai, Silkworm Cabbage, Cocktail White and Xueliqing, all of which are excellent varieties. Chinese cabbage contains minerals such as protein, fat, vitamins, calcium, phosphorus and a lot of crude fiber, which can be used for stewing, frying, stirring, stuffing and side dishes. Besides cooked food, Chinese cabbage can also be processed into dried vegetables or pickled products. For example, the "Beijing Winter Cuisine" in Rizhao, Shandong Province is a famous local dish made of Chinese cabbage.
Chinese cabbage is also called "Beijing variety cabbage" in the west, that is, heading cabbage, which is called Shaocai in Cantonese. China cabbage has broad green leaves and white cabbage. Many leaves are tightly wrapped together to form a cylinder, and most of them will form a dense head. The leaves wrapped inside are light green or even light yellow because they can't see the sun.
Chinese cabbage is resistant to storage, so China people, especially northerners, have special feelings for Chinese cabbage. In times of economic difficulties, Chinese cabbage is the only vegetable they can eat all winter. A family often needs to store hundreds of kilograms of Chinese cabbage to cope with winter, so Chinese cabbage has evolved various burning methods in China. When the lowest temperature in winter is about -5℃, Chinese cabbage can be safely stored outdoors for winter, and the external leaves can be dried for internal insulation. If the temperature is lower, it needs to be cellar. However, in the cold north, there are several other ways to store Chinese cabbage in winter, such as pickling Korean winter vegetables in the north, northeast and east China, and storing Chinese cabbage in salt-deficient areas in the northeast, west, east Inner Mongolia and north Hebei before the cold.
Because Chinese cabbage is sown after corn harvest in autumn and harvested in early winter, it has a large yield and is easy to manage, but it needs to occupy land for storage, so it is very cheap to go on the market at the same time during the harvest period. Some merchants often use the slogan "cabbage price of a certain commodity" to promote their products, which should be cheap.
There are many varieties of Chinese cabbage, including loose leaf type, flower heart type, spherical type and hemispherical type. The main varieties are:
Along the Grand Canal, represented by Tianjin, there are green hemp leaves (Tianjin Green) with a planting history of 300 to 400 years. There are many green leaves, thin stems, less fiber and tender leaves.
Varieties with yellow leaves are also called yellow Brussels sprouts, yellow Brussels sprouts and yellow Brussels sprouts. In the 24th year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (1898), it was recorded in "Golden Gate" that "yellow-bud cabbage is better than winter bamboo shoots in the south of the Yangtze River, because it can never tire of eating", so it was also called "northern bamboo shoots".
Taiwan Province cabbage, which grows in Taiwan Province Province, is also a kind of Chinese cabbage, which is thinner than Beijing cabbage.