Talk:Chinese cabbage

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Contents

[edit] Naming

In Sainsburys, a supermarket in the UK, they sell "chinese leaves" and "pak choi" and these are not the same. Pak choi looks more like the vegetable in the picture at the Nutritional information on bok choy or even more like this image, whereas "chinese leaves" are what is in the picture in the article. Could someone clarify the nomenclature? Lupin 11:18, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

I've attempted, but this really is a hideous mess. But anyway, your links shows Chinensis varieties, while the article picture has a Pekinensis. Should this article be moved to the clearly ambiguous Chinese cabbage, since as "bok choy" everybody thinks they know what it is? Jpatokal 11:18, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm a major eater of this stuff. Using USA terms:
This isn't the US-opedia. The article covers all varieties of 白菜: there are a lot, and the nomenclature varies widely even in English-speaking countries. Jpatokal 02:09, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This may not be the US-opedia, but the rest of you all can't come up with distinct and definite terms for all these things. Plus, the US dialect is twice as popular as all the others put together. Also, it is wikipedia, not wikipaedia. Unless some Brittish/Australian/Indian person can come up with distinct names for all these veggies, there really isn't any point in arguing. I have names, and others don't.
You're missing the point here — scientifically this is all exactly one veggie, Brassica campestris, known as 白菜 in Chinese/Japanese. I've labeled the picture as such. Jpatokal 02:24, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Science knows not what a veggie is. Both "veggie" and "Bok Choy" are culinary terms. What the Chinese wikipedia does is up to the Chinese; they have cn.wikipedia.org for whatever they like. If the article were named Brassica Campestris, no problem. The article is named Bok Choy though; in English it is highly abnormal to refer to pekinensis plant material as Bok Choy.
OK, you win — the article is now under "Chinese cabbage", with a note stating that in English "bok choy" typically means the Chinensis type. If needed this can be split further someday... Jpatokal 03:57, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think the root cause of this mess in this article is the mixed use of Cantonese and mainland China's terminologies. The external links above give very good illustrations on how each of these vegi are different in look. Believe me, they all taste different too. The term "bak choy" means white vegetable. How much more generic a term can this be? So it would be a mistake to interprete the English loanword "Bak Choy" by its generic meaning. The term is spelled Bak Choy. From the sound of it, it is obviously based on Cantonese transliteration, so it should refer to the Bak Choy in Cantonese language, not "bai cai" in Mandarin which is totally a different species of plant life. Since this English wikipedia is an international thing, you have Cantonese and Mandarin origins mixed with US, UK, Australian, New Zealand English translations which resulted in a mess here. Many of these terms like "Bak Choy", "Yu Choy", "Choy Sum" and "Nappa" are obviously Cantonese because Cantonese immigrants have a much longer roots in Western countries. Almost all Chinese emmigrants who worked in the gold mines near San Francisco and the TransPacific Railroads over a century ago were all Cantonese and Taisanese from the Guangdong region. The new waves of Mandarin speaking immigrants did not enter the US until probably the late 1970s. So there is a much stronger influence of Cantonese language in the loanwords in the US English. I bet the same applies to British, Canadian and Australian English too. Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, New Zealand were all under the British Commonwealth. The Cantonese influence on British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealander loanwords is obvious because of the Chinese emmigrants from Hong Kong to these countries.
So if we want to clarify all these terminologies, we should stick with the Cantonese origins of these names. In Cantonese "Bak Choy" is not the same and the Mandarin "bai cai". "Choy Sum" is different from the Mandarin "cai sin". Nappa in Cantonese comes from "黃芽白" which is also called "天津白菜" or "肇菜". Associating "bai cai" with "Bak Choy" just because they write the same way in Chinese is the reason why this article is a mess.
I would suggest that all of these species of vegetables should spin off into separate articles with their own pictures and aliases.
Kowloonese 01:01, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
It's me again! I'm not following you; it's just that I usually concentrate on two topics — Chinese things and vegetables.
If you want to do what you suggest, I am delighted that someone is working on it who knows the varieties well and cares about right names and good organization. However, I first want to share a thought with you, something that is personally painful for me to admit, a conclusion that shocked me when I was first forced to it — there's really not that much to say about vegetables.
(stairs grimly at shoes, slowly pulls self together)
I'm saying I suspect it would take a mighty effort indeed not to end up with many, many stubby little articles with nothing but a picture and a few sentences about typical preparation, and half of their information in common.
If it were my call, I might split this into one article for Pekinensis Group and one article for Chinensis Group (under those or some choice of common names), but there are other possibilities. We could actually create one giant article covering all of Brassica rapa, including all of the Chinese cabbages, along with turnip (brassica rapa) and rapini, but that might be too much.
In any case, the turnip article definitely needs to make up its mind whether its about all of Brassica rapa or only about the turnip. I avoided creating the Brassica rapa article so that it would be easier to move things around in the future.
What do you think?
— Pekinensis 04:22, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If you build it, they will come. Once the article is in place, all kind of info will come in. If you are with wikipedia long enough, you would notice that no stub stays as a stub for too long. Nutritional information, where they are produced, how they are related to other species, recepes, aliases, pictures etc. I didn't suggest to have the cabbage article split into pieces. We should have main article for all the common information and then have stubs for each variety. Kowloonese 06:49, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
Rather than split off into stubs, why not just have a few more images representative of the different varieties and the names they're usually known by in the US/UK? Hopsyturvy 14:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
We have separate articles for Pinot meunier, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc, which all differ from one another by just one mutation - so I think we can manage separate articles for subspecies of something as major as B. napa. And I'm normally a "joiner" rather than a "splitter" when it comes to Wikipedia articles. They won't be the biggest articles, but they'll be quite repsectable - there's not much there about the genetics, cultivation, history etc at the moment. And it might help reduce the confusion we've seen, although I understand some of that was under previous names. PS "Pak Choi" seems the most common transliteration in British English, I don't know if that's a Hong Kong influence or what. FlagSteward 19:44, 1 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Varieties

Dozens that the article ignores. Omitted from the current article, for example, is the prized, slightly spicy 油菜 yóucài (yu toy in Taishanese, yau choy in Wuhanese), a small, flowering cultivar sometimes called "Shanghai bok choy." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.44.182.233 (talk) 23:30, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

"Yu choy" is Rapeseed (Brassica napus), an entirely different species. Badagnani (talk) 23:53, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Advocacy

A great stir fry has lots of Choy Sum and a bit of Yu Choy. Bok Choy will do, but it is like any other super-sized veggie: lacking in taste and generally damaged. It is also more likely to be bitter. Baby bok choy is like regular bok choy, but cute and expensive.

The Nappa Cabbage is bland and floppy junk, used as filler to cheapen egg rolls.

I had to say something because nappa is my favorite veggi. If you are also a major cook in this stuff, you can try cooking your nappa differently. The favor of nappa will not come out until you cook it very very well done. An uncooked nappa is bland. A well cooked nappa is sweet and tendor. Nappa is often used to line the bottom of Cantonese claypot dishes. The nappa is cooked until it is tendor and the favor of all other ingredients soaked into the leaves. Yes, I know you cannot expect vitamin C in such preparation of nappa, but it is the delicious way to eat it. You just get your vitamin C from other veggi in fresh salad. Kowloonese 01:23, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
And it's also an essential ingredient in kimchi! Jpatokal 05:16, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Sure. Adding a lot of garlics and pepper will definitely fix the bland problem. Kowloonese 06:49, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing article

I find this article (and Brassica rapa) a bit confusing. The introductory sentence clearly declares Chinese cabbage to be the chinensis variety, yet later paragraphs talk about the pekinensis group (calling it "Chinese white cabbage") as if it were a kind of Chinese cabbage (presumably the Chinensis group). And boy if you look up Brassica rapa, you find that Bok choy is the chinensis group (fair enough), but "Chinese cabbage" is now the pekinensis group. I think we can do better, though I don't know enough to start sorting it out. A-giau 05:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah the chinenis and pekinensis problem should be fixed, but personally I think the bigger problem with this article is the ambiguity of the term "Chinese cabbage". Namely, it could be used to refer to too many things. Maybe this article should be changed to a disambig. page and the information here moved to separate articles. Sjschen (talk) 18:28, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 青江菜

青江菜 (qing jiang cai) appears in a cookbook of mine and I think it should be added to the article. I think it is the Mandarin name of "baby bok choy" or "Shanghai bok choy." Badagnani (talk) 09:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, there are tonnes of names for this vegetable. I say add it. Sjschen (talk) 18:36, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image caption

The image is named and labeled "bok choy", but it sure looks like a pekinensis type to me? I've changed the caption to the unambiguous brassica rapa pekinensis, but I think the article desperately needs a good shot of a chinensis type for comparison. Jpatokal (talk) 04:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

We call what is in the photo bok choy in the United States. Look again at the enlarged white stems of the specimen on the left. Badagnani (talk) 04:38, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Garr — you're right, but the photo makes it look confusingly similar to nappa in shape (but not color), as the left one is clearly forming a head while the article body says that it shouldn't do that. We need something more like this. Maybe it's time to invest a few bucks for the greater good of mankind and go cabbage-shopping... Jpatokal (talk) 06:05, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

FYI, there are some good photos of various varieties at http://www.nickys-nursery.co.uk/seeds/pages/altsal-pak-choi.htm 91.84.181.38 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 11:36, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inaccurate

Regarding this section:

“ Choy sum (Chinese: 菜心; pinyin: càixīn; literally "vegetable heart"; Hokkien chai sim): Also called yu cai,(Chinese: 油菜; pinyin: yoú cài; literally "oil vegetable"), this brassica refers to a small, delicate version of pak choi. In appearance it is more similar to rapini, or broccoli rabe, than the typical pak choi. "Choy sum" is sometimes used to describe the stem of any Chinese cabbage or the heart of Shanghai pak choi. ”

I don't believe 油菜 is correct, as that is a different species, Brassica napus (rapeseed). Badagnani (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I think "yucai" may be 豫菜. Badagnani (talk) 18:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, no, that means Henan cuisine. Badagnani (talk) 18:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I think yau choy (油菜) is the a kind of Cantonese disk and choy sum (菜心) the most frequently used vegetable in the disk. When choy sum is boiled in hot water, it is pak shap and taste plain. To make it more tasty, oil is added to choy sum. Ho yau (蠔油), the oyster (oily) sauce covers the disk of choy sum. It is 蠔油菜心. — HenryLi (Talk) 00:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean "disk"? Like a computer disk? That doesn't make sense. Regarding 油菜, it's a different species from Chinese cabbage. Badagnani (talk) 05:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see, you mean "dish." And you think "yau choy" is made from choy sum plus oil. Interesting. It's confusing, however, because "you cai" is also rapeseed. Badagnani (talk) 05:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll back him up -- 油菜 is a common dish in Singapore as well, although (AFAIK) pretty much any leafy green can be used. Jpatokal (talk) 13:37, 24 May 2008 (UTC)