CHONGQING (CQNEWS) -- A small dish carries a big dream. After a hundred years of experience, Fuling Pickled Mustard Tubers has developed into tens of billions of yuan industry and has become a veritable “rice-matched dish”. It is the season for harvesting the raw material “mustard tuber”, and farmers are busy in the fields.

When you walk into Erdu Village in Jiangbei Sub-district, Fuling District, which is known as “the Hometown of Chinese Pickles”, you can see mustard tubers on the hillside and in the fields. With knives in one hand and tubers in the other, the farmers stepped in the mud and bent over, chopping and picking in one go, filling baskets with tubers.

The raw material for Fuling Pickled Mustard Tubers is the mustard tuber, which is sown each year around White Dew and transplanted after Cold Dew, and harvested the following year around the Beginning of Spring. By March, local households are processing the air-dried and dehydrated pickles.

“It was considered a good harvest this year, with more than 10 mu of mustard tuber land, yielding about 5,000 jin per mu. The current purchase price has also increased by about one-third, which is calculated to increase income by 30,000 to 40,000 yuan.” Zhang Qirong, 51, who was once a registered poor household, not only has gotten out of poverty by growing mustard tuber, but also increased his income year after year.

In the fields, farmers are skillfully peeling the mustard tubers, quickly stringing the processed tubers into bunches, and then orderly carrying the bunches to the trucks for drying...

The harvesting season is the busiest time for local villagers. Mustard tubers are the most direct and warm consolation for the hardy and industrious villagers of this land.

Farmers sell the harvested mustard tuber to pickles factories. According to the introduction, Fuling District sowed 729,000 mu of mustard tubers in the autumn of 2020, with an output of about 1.6 million tons and an output value of about 1.4 billion yuan.

Workers on the production workplant of Fuling Zhacai Group are peeling the tubers. They told the reporter, “Peel the tubers the pickled mustard tubers for smoother, crispy and tastier pickles.”

The production line is running efficiently. The birth of Fuling Pickled Mustard Tubers goes through the processes of cleaning, cutting, desalting, dehydrating, mixing, packaging, sterilizing, boxing and packing.

“Plain dressing looks best and pickles taste best.” This proverb is a true reflection of the life of the people of Hometown of Chinese Pickles. For the people of Fuling, it would be uncomfortable to have a plate of pickles missing from the dinner table.

Over the past 120 years, Fuling Pickled Mustard Tubers has gone from being a snack for the people on both sides of the Yangtze River to becoming the national “rice-matched dish” of the Chinese people in shopping malls. Perhaps it is as a poem about pickles says, “The seeds are scattered around White Dew, transplanted in Cold Dew; after a winter of growth, the harvest is obtained in spring. When the wind sends the winter away, tubers are pickled in the earthen jars; the flavor is therefore nurtured, and the dish of pickles is served for families after jars are opened”, Fuling Pickled Mustard Tubers also makes the lives of the local people more fragrant and tasty. (Translated by Wang Huixin, Fathom Language Limited)