Leeks, cut and grown again, are a favorite on Chinese tables

Written by Wei Shuihua

Header image | TuChong Creative

"Jiu" is a very special Chinese character. In Chinese, almost all Chinese characters describing vegetables have a "艹" head that represents meaning. Such as eggplant, reed, celery, wormwood, onion, garlic, lettuce, and茭... "Jiu" is a rare exception. In fact, there is another variant of leek: "韮". But at the latest in the 16th century, it was no longer used in written Chinese. In the Qing Dynasty's annotated version of "Shuowen Jiezi", the explanation of "韮" is: "The leek grows again after being cut, which is different from ordinary grass, so it has its own character." Obviously, the word "Jiu" expresses that the stems and leaves growing out of the land continue to tiller, branch out, and grow more and more luxuriantly. Even if the top "艹" is cut off, there are still countless "艹" waiting to be cut below.

It is a bit like Sisyphus pushing a stone up the mountain over and over again, a metaphor full of deductive color. Perhaps, the simplification process of the word "leek" is the earliest self-deprecating joke of the Chinese people.

No.1

Leeks have a great connection with China. Europeans and Americans never eat leeks, and there is no word specifically for leeks. They call leeks "Chinesechive", which means "Chinese onion". Leeks have appeared in almost all early written records of ancient China. The earliest collection of poems, "The Book of Songs", says: "Sacrifice lambs and leeks"; the earliest agricultural book "Xia Xiaozheng" says: "There are leeks in the game"; the earliest textbook "Book of Rites" says: "Leeks are called Fengben"; the earliest geography book "Classic of Mountains and Seas" says: "The mountain of Danxun has many leeks"; the earliest unearthed silk book "Ten Questions" says: "The grass that is a thousand years old is only leeks."

Obviously, as a food ingredient, leeks run through all aspects of society, including diet, sacrifice, farming, education, and officialdom. It not only represents the most common vegetable in early China, but also witnesses the changes in the Chinese lifestyle at that time. Herders in Hulunbuir, Chifeng and other places in Inner Mongolia have preserved the custom of picking wild leeks on the grassland. Wild leeks have a strong fragrance, and a small amount can be cut to make dumplings; or the leek flowers can be chopped and pickled into a sauce, which can be used to dip boiled lamb.

The Mongolian region has always been short of salt. After Genghis Khan unified the Mongolian tribes, he first attacked the Western Xia. The fundamental reason was that he coveted the salt resources in Ningxia. The word "Qaidam" is actually the transliteration of the Mongolian word "Salt Lake". Behind it is also the desire for salt and land. Specifically in cooking, leeks are a vegetable with a relatively high sodium content, and after pickling, leek flowers will be complexed with sodium chloride to form various amino acid salts, which effectively increase the saltiness and umami taste:

The leeks in dumpling stuffing and the chive flowers in mutton hotpot were originally invented to reduce the use of salt: compared with precious salt, the value of leeks, once regarded as weeds, is really not worth mentioning.

The ancestors who invented chive flower sauce could never have imagined that today, wild chive flower sauce from the Inner Mongolian grasslands could be flown to high-end shabu-shabu restaurants everywhere and sold as a highlight. The once-protagonist, the scarce and valuable salt, has become a cheap, unsalable commodity at the bottom of the supermarket shelf. The story of chives turning over a new leaf is not uncommon in any era and any place.

No.2

Since the Han and Wei dynasties, the climate in the Yellow River Basin, the core of the Chinese political power, has continued to become drier and colder. For leeks, which are not cold-resistant, survival in winter has become increasingly difficult. For this vegetable that represents the people's livelihood, the Chinese have put a lot of thought into it.

A passage in the Book of Han is thought-provoking: "The Taiguan Garden grows winter onions, leeks and leeks, covers them with roofs, and burns fires day and night to wait for the warmth to grow." Indoor, warm insulation layer, fire heating. This is probably the earliest greenhouse in the world. As we all know, plants grown in a greenhouse without sunlight cannot synthesize chlorophyll, have weak flavor accumulation, and become lighter. This is not good for most fruits. But leeks are different. In a dark room, they will show a beautiful yellow and white color, suitable for side dishes, bright and beautiful. After the original spicy, hot and pungent taste fades, a smell with woody, green onion, oily and orchid fragrance appears.

In fact, this is just like the fact that after skatole is diluted, pleasant jasmine and orange scents appear, which can be used to make perfume. They all come from the human instinct to seek benefits and avoid harm. The earliest artificial intervention vegetable in human history, leek, which is also one of the most important spice vegetables in Chinese cuisine, was born.

This vegetable, which has a fragrance comparable to that of shallots and a texture as fresh as bamboo shoots, is widely used on Chinese tables. Beijingers use chives to roll spring pancakes and roast duck; Sichuan people use chives as the soul ingredient in their wontons with red oil and braised beef noodles; Guangdong people use chives to scramble eggs, which are fragrant, soft, crispy and tender with multiple layers of flavor; Shanghai people use chives to remove the fishy smell and enhance the flavor of fish fillings in their wontons and dumplings made by yellow croaker; Zhejiang people always use chives to enhance the flavor of their stir-fried shredded pork. In addition to being a good dish for rice, this dish is also a perfect match for noodles.

The worse the environment, the more docile and versatile they become. This is the tenacious character of leeks, and it is also a mirror of the Chinese people.

© Guangxi Liuzhou Dong Village "Leek Festival"

No.3

The Chinese have transformed leeks beyond just leeks. In the sixth century, Jia Sixie's Qi Min Yao Shu described leeks harvesting as "no more than five cuts a year." But in the thirteenth century, Wang Zhen's Book of Agriculture changed it to "twice a month... if you add it up, you can cut more than ten times a year." Over the past seven hundred years, the yield of leeks per mu has increased more than three times.

In the pre-Qin period, semi-wild leeks could only be harvested twice a year, in spring and autumn. The cycle of cutting and growing again, and then cutting again, was repeated at an increasingly faster rate, which was the result of people's intervention in leek breeding and selection: leeks with more tender texture, faster growth, more fragrant smell, and more resistant to harvesting were prioritized for breeding, resulting in leeks being more and more resistant to being harvested, creating more benefits for farmers under the wave of increasingly refined social division of labor.

In addition, the iteration of cultivation technology has also promoted the pace of leek transformation. In the "Four Seasons Compendium" at the end of the Tang Dynasty, there appeared a transplanting technology that could save land seeds and improve production efficiency; in the Song Dynasty, people had mastered the softening cultivation technology of leek, and cultivated leek through cellar softening and covering soil and manure softening to achieve the purpose of continuous supply in all seasons; the agricultural book of the Yuan Dynasty further refined the transplanting technology, dividing it into seedling transplanting and root transplanting... In the end, leek became the most common vegetable that Chinese people can cut at any time and eat everywhere regardless of season or region.

In spring, on the coast of Fujian where the weather warms up early, a plate of clam meat fried with spring leeks embodies people’s best wishes for the new year.

In the summer, on a hot night in Liaoning, a midnight snack consisting of strings of grilled leeks embodies the spirit of the Northeastern men.

In autumn, in the bleak land of Qi and Lu, the steaming hot and oily leek dumplings are people's expression of joy for the harvest.

In winter, in the charming Jiangsu and Zhejiang plains, a pot of freshly-baked mutton soup sprinkled with finely chopped chive leaves is the most gentle rice killer in the damp and cold winter.

The fragrance of glutinous rice is as good as cooked jade, and the taste of leeks is better than roasted lamb.

©A Chinese chive pie famous on Twitter

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In today's context, leeks seem to have become a synonym for humiliation. They are a mouthpiece for expressing social despair and a tool for self-deprecation. But in fact, the original meaning of the words "essence" and "elite" is leek flowers.

To be able to come back to life from the dead and to recover from disability is a magical ability that ordinary weeds cannot learn. It is also a more extraordinary character than attaching oneself to powerful people.