 Street Life of Watermelons and Cabbage |
Page 4 of 6 |
| Street Life of Watermelons and Cabbage |
Page 4 of 6 |
Cabbage |
In November and December, a similar seasonal phenomenal occurs when the local farmers harvest the Chinese cabbage.
| Truck-loads of cabbage appear on street corners throughout
the city beginning in November. At night, they are covered with thick dark blue cotton
quilts to help retard freezing, but those precautions are most always fruitless. The
cabbage invariably begins to wilt and rot. From 1985 - 1997, this had been the only fresh vegetable that the government still controlled and Beijing newspapers propagandized bumper cabbage harvests as an indicator of how well the economy was doing. But in 1997, the government even withdrew from managing cabbage production and distribution, but Beijing newspapers still headlined the cabbage harvest to be 280 million kilos enough for each Beijinger to eat 28 kilos! But as Beijingers have become more affluent under China's economic modernization programs, they now scoff at cabbage as "cheap, old-fashioned" food. |
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