We often joke that every Chinese has a farming gene in their body, wasteland on the side of the road, vacant land near construction sites, abandoned flower beds, balconies at home, wherever there is soil, there will be something planted, and there is no idle land.
Onions, garlic, coriander, greens, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and even potatoes, mushrooms, melons and fruits, ......They are all vegetables that are often grown by people nowadays.
Why do Chinese love to grow vegetables?What is the special relationship between vegetables and China?How did our modern common vegetables develop?
If you are interested in these questions, I recommend you to read the "History of Vegetables" by Shi Jun, a doctor of botany from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a famous popular science writer.
The language of this book is concise and interesting, with the context of ancient Chinese history as the line, from the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties to modern times, according to the characteristics of the development of vegetables in various periods, it talks about the origin and cognition of Chinese vegetables, the threshold from wild vegetables to household vegetables, the influence of physiocratism on vegetables, vegetable planting technology, and also talks about the development of vegetables in different periods of war and prosperity, as well as the encounter, collision and integration ...... of foreign vegetables and local vegetables
This book can be used as an interest reading, or as a popular science reading to increase knowledge, and you can learn a lot of allusions and knowledge related to our common vegetables.
For example:
Tan Bai: "laid off" from the grain department and "returned to work" at the vegetable stall
This kind of vegetable is really peculiar in appearance. They resemble melons and bamboo shoots, and they grow white and fat one by one, and there are remnants of green leaves on the top of their heads. However, this thing is neither a melon nor a bamboo shoot, but a "diseased" plant stalk. Don't worry, this "infection" does not affect human health, but rather gives us delicious taste. And what everyone doesn't know is that in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, this plant was an important food crop, and it was not until later that it "jumped" into the ranks of vegetables.