I’ve spilled a lot of ink over greens in my thirty years as a food writer, often lamenting the lack of them when we lived in Bulgaria. I could never understand why turnip, mustard, and beet greens weren’t part of the diet there, especially since I saw fields and fields of those very crops. Salads are adored in the Balkans, though, so I was never without lettuces and other salad greens, which I washed in tap water, which I also drank. Here in China, I can’t drink the water and breathing the air is probably not a good idea, either. But I digress. I’m here to celebrate Chinese greens.

On the blog six years ago, in a review of China Star, a Chinese restaurant in Fairfax, Virginia, I wrote: “I always seem to have a hard time ordering greens in Chinese restaurants, even though I know that they nearly always have them. The word ‘greens’ doesn’t seem to help, nor does ‘vegetable.’ At China Star, I slowly went down the menu, asking about many of the items (and I had downloaded and printed out their menu in advance and made some preliminary choices). I was thrilled to see ‘Sautéed Vegetable of the Season’ listed, so I inquired. Our waitress told us that we had the choice of bok choy, yau choy, Chinese cabbage, or pea leaves. Pea leaves are among my favorite vegetables, so that was a no-brainer.”

But “bok choy,” “yau choy,” and “Chinese cabbage” can be misleading. Like all of the members of the sprawling, octopus-like Brassica genus of plants, common names are problematic. Worse, the scientific classification is not always clear, either. My go-to authority on all vegetables, my friend Elizabeth Schneider, has written extensively about most of the edible vegetables of the world. In her 800-page encyclopedic Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini (William Morrow, 2001), she wrote, “Phooey on the whole mess of common names!” She was writing about phooi, one of the common names of basella (Basella alba, or Malabar Spinach). “The plant is distinct enough to have its own family, Basellaceae.” Basella is nothing compared to the Brassica genus: “Technically, the term ‘mustard greens,’ refers to a single species of old world plants, Brassica juncea,” Elizabeth explains, “which is thought to have originated in the Central Asian Himalayas, and China, India, and the Caucasus…. But taxonomists identify as many as 17 subgroups or subspecies that can differ sharply in heat, flavor, and appearance.”  

Brassica includes so many different types of edible plants — roots such as turnips, leaves such as collards, flowers such as broccoli, buds such as Brussels sprouts, stems such as kohlrabi, and many important seeds for oils and flavorings. Rapeseed oil is traditional here in Sichuan where I live. It’s no wonder the nomenclature is confusing.

Of the so-called “Chinese cabbage” (Brassica rapa, Pekinensis Group), Elizabeth notes that there are “bewildering brassicas” that cluster under that umbrella-like name. In the States, the term might refer to what we call “Napa cabbage” or “wong bok” or it might refer to the taller Michihli type. But “da bai cai” and “bok choy” are also used. “Bok” or “pak” means white and “choi” means vegetable, but “white vegetable” hardly describes what most of us think of as bok choy/pak choi. Again, Elizabeth states our frustration: “Will scientific nomenclature come to the rescue? Unfortunately, when it comes to the genus Brassica, to which everything we know as bok choy and Chinese cabbage belongs (along with hundreds of other plants), scientists disagree. Although most concur on the species rapa, each vegetable has a subspecies or subgroup or two to argue about as well. No answer there.” I hinted at this confusion last month when writing about the greens I was taught to cook in Thailand.

Here in China, there are so many cooking greens available it is mind-boggling. I buy them whether I know what they are or not. Most of them can be cooked in any of the several similar ways that I cook all greens; some cook more quickly than others, but that’s no problem. Here, at least, I can be pretty sure that they are all meant to be cooked. You pray to find salad greens in China, unless you go to one of the German or French chains, your best bet being METRO, the Costco-like big box store, where I buy huge packages of romaine and arugula. The sad thing is that the Chinese just don’t eat many raw foods. Peeled fruits, yes, but even they must be washed in a special bleachy soap to kill any microorganisms. I’m sure the avoidance of raw foods is because for centuries, they have used night soil to fertilize their crops. It’s still common, so I, too, thoroughly wash all my produce here. The agribusiness farms are probably using industrial fertilizers and insecticides. I don’t want them on my food any more than I want feces. The big clamshell packages of romaine and arugula that I bought this past weekend were grown in China via the StarFarm project initiated by the German giant METRO in 2007 “to work directly with producers to train and source safe, quality agro-products for domestic and export markets.” Each package has a traceability barcode that you can scan with your smartphone and see exactly where and how the product was grown and when it was harvested. I almost didn’t buy the greens because I thought they were outdated, but what I was seeing was the harvest date – the day before I bought them. Much of the local produce is actually grown organically, but, alas, organic can mean night soil. I wash everything thoroughly.

In the giant French supermarket, Carrefour, I ran across the greens at the top of the page that looked an awful lot like broccoli raab (Brassica rapa, Ruvo Group) to me. I bought them having not a clue what they really were. I only recognize a handful of Chinese characters and while I did recognize the second one, cài (another word for “vegetable”), that was hardly helpful. Four hours of research later I was hardly any better off, though I finally figured out that the first character, “yóu” means “oily” and that “oily cài” means rape greens. That made sense, given the preponderance of rapeseed oil here, but rape is yet another Brassica species – napus – and I couldn’t verify it in my searching. The images of greens I found online certainly looked like my bunches, but they also looked an awful lot like my beloved broccoli raab, or rapini. And I know several other types of greens that are called yóu cài as well. In my hunt, I did manage to decipher the word and character for mustard, jie, as in jiecai, or jiezi, or jiemo, but mustard can also be zhacai (exploding vegetable), so the Chinese are no better off than we are when it comes to common names. And I finally decided to just cook the damn things and be done with it. I was almost convinced that what I had was “Chinese Flowering Mustard” (Brassica chinensis var. oleifera) called yau choy in Cantonese or you cai in Mandarin, but the photos in Elizabeth’s book don’t show the decidedly serrated edges of the ones I bought. I can’t help but think they’re some modern hybrid, like, well, broccoli raab (also known as rapini, cime di rapa, broccoletti, and roccoletti di rape in Italian, according to Elizabeth).

Sidetracked once again, I found that cime de rapa – “turnip tops” – in Mandarin can be translated as luobo qingcai (oily young greens – or rape greens). Yet another character and word for “oily” and another one for “rape.” The Canadians were so smart to come up with a new word – “canola.”

I cooked the greens the same way I cook most greens. I cut the toughest stems into pieces and added them to the pot of hot oil first and stir-fried them until they were beginning to soften. I then threw in the thoroughly washed greens with the water that clung to them, some salt, and some hot pepper flakes. I added a little more oil, stirred it well, turned off the heat and let the pot sit, covered, while I made the rest of my dinner. Shortly before everything else was ready, I tasted the greens, turned up the heat, and cooked them just a little more. They had a bitter punch, but not as strong as broccoli raab. I guess they were you cai.

P.S. I forgot to mention that I throw in a bunch of slivered garlic with the greens, and correct the seasoning with lemon juice or vinegar (in the States I would have used my own hot pepper vinegar). I sometimes add an anchovy in lieu of salt. Sometimes soy. SEASON TO TASTE, folks!