Wild Vegetables of My Home Region

I call more than one place my home. Every place I have lived is my home. I feel no special love for my home, only because I go there to fish and swim. I meet my home in the morning and in the evening and then I make acquaintance with it little by little, like with a neighbor in the same village. Although it is not my relative, sometimes it comes into mind since I have left the village. I have lived over ten years in the eastern part of Zhejiang province, then six years each in Nanking and Tokyo, all of these places I would call home. Now I live in Peking, and this city also has turned into my home.

Recently my wife came back from the Xidan market and said they were selling Jicai there. That reminded me of a tradition in the eastern part of Zhejiang province. Jicai is a wild vegetable that people often eat in spring there, particularly in the countryside.

Even in the city, people with gardens can pick it and eat it any time.

With a pair of scissors and a "harvest basket" in each hand, women and children squat and search for it on the ground. What interesting and enjoyable work! In these times the children sang, "Horse-orchid-header and Jicai, the older sister marries the neighbor. "Later the farmers bring Horse-orchid-header to the city market, but Jicai still remains a type of wild vegetable, that is not sold, but is collected by oneself. Since time immemorial, there are legends about the Jicai, mainly in the south. In the Trip to the West Lake, it says, "On the third day of the third month in the lunar calendar, all women and men wear blooms of the Jicai. There is a saying: In the three months of spring, one wears the bloom of the Jicai, that bursts more powerfully into bloom than peach and plum blossoms." Also in the Records of Qing Jia from Gu Lu, it says, "Jicai popularly is also called wild vegetable flower. Because there is a saying, that the ants scrawl over the stove on the third day of the third month in the lunar calendar, people put the flower of this will vegetable in the cooking plate on this day in order to keep away the ants. In the village children call out to sell these blossoms in the morning. The women wear them in their hair hoping for bright shining eyes. Therefore this bloom popularly is also called ‘bright eye'." But the people in the eastern part of Zhejiang province heed these beliefs less. They only collect it in order to prepare meals with it or to use it as an ingredient in their New Year's Day cakes.

The yellow-blooming-wheat-fruit, also called dysentery herb, belongs to the chrysanthemum family. Its small, round leaves have a fuzzy, white texture and grow in pairs on either side of the stem.

Its flowers are yellow and grow only at the tip of the branches. In the spring, people pick its young leaves, grind them, and skim off the juice. They then add flour to the juice and bake it to make a yellow-blooming-wheat-fruitcake. This fruit is praised in a childrens' song:

The yellow-blooming wheat fruits are tough,
I shut the front door and eat it:
Half a piece I cannot pass up on,
I eat a whole piece of fruit on my own.

When they remember a deceased person, standing beside his grave on "All Souls' day", some families—presumably those which uphold old traditions—bring the yellow-blooming wheat fruits. Instead of cakes they make them into either pearls the size of fingertips, or into thin rolls that look like small fingers. Five or six of them together form a so-called cocoon fruit. I don't exactly know its meaning. Maybe this food is so named deliberately in order to remind people that the silkworms spin their cocoons during the sacrificial times. Nobody knows why for certain. Since I left home when I was 12 or 13, I stopped taking part in the All Soul's commemorations and stopped seeing the cocoon fruits. Since I moved to Peking, I haven't seen any of the yellow-blooming-wheat-fruit. In Japan, its name is "Go-gyo" (imperial appearance) and it belongs, like the Jicai, to the seven spring-herbs. The Japanese create snacks like mugwort dumpling out of it, that they call "herb-cakes". One eats it most often during the time of the Spring Equinox. The herb-cakes in Peking always taste Japanese, no longer like the yellow-blooming-wheat-fruitcake of my childhood. During "All Soul's day," one often eats another type of wild vegetable at the gravesite, Chinese tragant, popularly called herb purple. After the harvest, the farmers plant these herbs to fertilize the field, but they don't appreciate the plants many other good qualities. Its delicate stalk is edible. It is very palatable, it has a delicious taste similar to the pea-sprouts. Clustered in field, its flowers form a rich purple red carpet larger than a hectare. The shpes of the flowers resemble butterflies or chickens. Children enjoy them above all. Occasionally one finds a rare white Chinese tragant. They are very precious, according to the traditions, they can heal dysentery. In the Japanese Large Dictionary of the Pai-sentences, it says, "As common as a dandelion, people have become familiar with it since their childhoods." There is probably no woman who has never picked Chinese tragant. In ancient China, flower-wreaths were unknown. But children now make wreaths with balls of Chinese tragant blossoms, that they also enjoy playing with. In the eastern part of Zhejiang province, one uses drums and wind instruments at the commemoration at the gravesite, so that young men can follow the sounds of the music and find the "beautiful girls driving with the boat to the grave." Poor families admittedly have not drums—and no wind instruments, but one can see some bouquets of Chinese tragant and azaleas on the tip of their boats and beneath the windows. These bouquets also decoratively identify these boats.