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Dry Vegetable from Ningxia
Monday, April 11, 2004-7:38 PM
Sunday morning Natasha and I walked past three people selling what looked to me like steel wool or asbestos. I wanted to figure out what it was they were selling.
"Sugar," the guy told me.
Sugar? That's a strange word for him to know. Anyways, it doesn't look like anything made from sugar. I asked him again.
Turns out he wasn't saying "sugar", he was saying "chi de" or "something you eat".
What they were selling is called "gan cai" in Chinese or "dry vegetable". It actually looks like big wads of hair.
The three people selling the dry vegetable (two men and a woman) were from the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China. One third of the population in Ningxia belong to the Muslim Hui minority group.
"How do you eat it?" Natasha asked.
"You put it in soup."
"What does it taste like?"
"It doesn't taste like anything. It tastes like the soup."
At first he quoted me a price of one hundred-sixty renminbi per jin. That's $85 a pound.
Eight-five dollars per pound for something that doesn't taste like anything? Didn't sound like a good deal.
But I wanted to make a token purchase before we left. I asked him how much was the smallest amount he would sell me. He told me he'd sell me sixteen renminbi's worth.
I offered to buy five renminbi's worth, which was overly generous. He initially refused, but as we walked away he grabbed a handful and agreed to give it to me for five renminbi.
The next time Natasha and I have soup, we'll try it.
[Footnote: Additional research has revealed that this vegetable is actually a type of fresh water algea (Nostic flagelliforme). In Cantonese it is called fat choy or "hair vegetable".
It's popular around lunar New Year because the name in Cantonese sounds similar to a Cantonese expression meaning "to strike it rich".
The steep price is the result of limits placed on the harvesting of this vegetable (which grows best in places like Ningxia) due to the negative effects harvesting causes to the environment.]
[Correction: A reader has informed me that the Mandarin word for this food is "Fa Cai" and is only eaten on account of its name.]
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