The Soul-Soothing Vegetable Shop | The One-Pot Nun’s Table
I. Smallholders at the mercy of the elements and mothers longing to escape the motherhood penalty
There are many urban only children born in the nineties like Chu-chu-zi who share this “ignorance”. In the process of following their parents into urbanisation, they grew distant from the land and agricultural production. Having been “fed” and raised within a consumer atmosphere of “cheap, abundant, and convenient”—constructed by the combined forces of the food industry, wholesale markets, and supermarkets—it is indeed difficult for them to understand why there might be a seasonal gap in autumn.
Since Chu-chu-zi is the most inquisitive of my dining companions, and being someone who enjoys playing the teacher, I naturally seized the opportunity to educate her on “spring sowing” and “autumn sowing”, and analysed the relationship between temperature and yield during crop growth. With a look of bewilderment, she indicated that she would learn to accept this reality, before stating her most pressing need: she wanted to eat vegetables!
At first glance, this view seems to contradict the “common sense” shaped by manufacturers, merchants, and the media in the era of the food industry. However, a wealth of research indicates that as animal-based foods are overproduced and supplied, becoming staples on the family table, Alzheimer’s disease has begun to appear in younger populations.
I recently watched a film called “Still Alice”. The protagonist is a linguistics professor who develops early-onset Alzheimer’s in her fifties. Her experience mirrors what I have long feared: over the past two years, I have already experienced “symptoms” such as forgetting words mid-sentence or being unable to remember things unless I write them down.
I think I know where the problem lies. After having my child, I founded the Lemao Hometown Nature School while simultaneously raising them. For nearly ten years, I lived in a state of total exhaustion—physically overworked, mentally overstrained, and chronically sleep-deprived. It was truly exhausting. What kept me from collapsing, besides my love for my child and the world, was a lifelong habit of eating “more vegetables, less meat”, which kept my body functioning relatively normally. However, a human being is not just a body; there is also the mind and the soul.
When I realised that no matter what I did, I could not satisfy those around me, the accumulated negative emotions began to damage my soul and body. Because of this damage, I found myself unable to maintain a healthy relationship with myself. To save myself, to break free from the motherhood penalty, and to stop being “a wife trapped in self-restriction and over-extension”, I left Mingyue Village and returned to Yulin in Chengdu to build a new life-support network. Once again, I am fighting for my own growth, health, and happiness.
II.“Vegetables” can awaken the mind and soothe the soul
Because of my focus on depression and Alzheimer’s, I paid extra attention to relevant information while reading. “In a report published by the famous Framingham Heart Study in the United States, researchers pointed out that eating three extra portions of fruit and vegetables daily reduces the probability of stroke by 22%.” Reading this, I thought that since the arteries and blood vessels responsible for transporting blood to the brain must be maintained through a correct diet, and since the benefits of fruit and vegetables accumulate quickly, it is a reasonable hypothesis that eating more of them can spare us from dementia caused by vascular ill-health.
After six months of the Little Dining Table, the physical and mental state of my dining companions improved significantly. Naturally, they developed a physiological craving for the healthy produce and even the act of “receiving their meals on time”. Especially after a weekend of “eating whatever is at home” or “reckless dining out”, they look forward to the variety of vegetables in the Little Dining Table lunchboxes with great anticipation.
However, delicious and healthy vegetables cannot be obtained simply by being willing to pay a high price.
Smallholders like Hu Xuemei, who sell directly from the production end, are at the mercy of the elements. If nothing grows in the field, nothing ends up in our pots. Whenever this happens, I feel very fortunate to live near the Yulin Market, and I am deeply grateful to the Longquan Green Vegetable shop.
III. The business philosophy of a community vegetable shop
Beyond being locally grown and ecologically produced, the owner meticulously prepares the vegetables, which is the main reason I like visiting this shop.
The stems of the oyster mushrooms are always trimmed clean; the cauliflower is split in half for those who only wish to buy a half-head; and the snow cabbage, ciba, and small dumplings only arrive in small quantities every few days. The fermented glutinous rice stored in jars triggers a scramble among customers roughly every fortnight. As for my favourite traditional firm tofu, there is always a basketful available every single day.
There are several owners—yes, everyone in the shop is an owner—working in a very egalitarian partnership. Though they have different roles, anyone can answer a customer’s question or handle the slight adjustments between the listed price and the final amount charged. They can also swap tasks depending on who is available. As a result, customers feel relaxed, sensing the seamless rapport and responsiveness between the staff.
The shop’s layout is also very logical. Maize, taro, carrots, and sweet potatoes are displayed outside for customers to browse. Round radishes and sand-pot radishes sit beside the tofu, and next to the tofu is the fruit. A vegetable shop selling fruit? How strange. Yet, it is a strange thing that makes perfect sense—never more than two types of fruit are on sale at any one time.
From summer through to autumn, I’ve bought two types of organic grapes and two types of pears here. Grapes that had fallen loose during transport were packed into boxes and sold at half price; I managed to snag a few bargains like that after my morning exercise.
Beside the fruit, one often finds the most sought-after seasonal vegetables. This season, the stars are naturally pea shoots—a designated “provincial dish of Sichuan”—and radish greens. For those in the know, these seasonal delicacies are a must-buy the moment they spot them. An older lady and I both reached for the same medium-sized bunch at once; our hands brushed in mid-air, and we shared a smile, acknowledging each other’s discerning taste. (Ways to prepare radish greens are attached at the end.)
Beyond vegetables, the owners bring in a few chickens, ducks, and rabbits each day, likely pre-ordered by regulars. For anyone else, hoping to buy some on a whim is a pipe dream; I’ve never dared hope to find a stray piece of meat here. While queuing for the scales with my vegetables, I enjoy watching the owner’s display of butchery. Once finished, the meat is packed into small baskets to await collection—at that moment, the shop becomes a remote preparation area and kitchen for the customers.
Beside the meat is the shop’s main display table. The elderly regulars always start by circling this table, where various seasonal vegetables await their destiny. Celery, spinach, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, bitter gourd, luffa, aubergine, tomato, large green chillies, thread chillies, screw chillies… a handful here, a few there, and before long, the scene shifts from “come and buy” to “packing up to leave”. Following behind these “silver-haired treasures”, I’ve often felt a sudden sense of urgency.
IV. A Community Space with Deeply Therapeutic Effects
Compared to small-scale farmers, who are heavily dependent on the weather, market vendors have the advantage of a stable supply and can offer customers a wider variety of produce. Whether they source their stock from farmers or buy in bulk from wholesale markets, vendors filter and combine their offerings, providing immense convenience for urban residents.
As the most vital hub of community life, the wet market is where information converges, money flows, and emotions mingle. It should naturally be the most accessible and frequently visited healing environment for residents. This makes it easy to understand why representative urban renewal projects from Beijing to Guangzhou, and then to Hangzhou and Chengdu, have focused on the “radical transformation of wet markets”.
Professor Xu Leiqing’s 408 research group at Tongji University has long focused on “community healing scenes”. In their latest article, *Community Healing Scenes: A Systematic Evaluation of Environmental Elements, Scenes, and Outcomes*, the researchers point out that the community is the smallest unit of a city and the place where residents spend the most time. Beyond naturalness, universality and everydayness are key attributes of a community’s built environment.
That heart-warming “vibrancy of daily life” found in Yulin is undoubtedly produced by the overlap of naturalness, universality, and everydayness. Things often overlooked in modern life—such as a sense of happiness and social interaction—can be easily found in a wet market or a regular vegetable shop. Residents engage in socialising here and find social support. The shop owners may not have realised that by simply doing a basic job, they have created a “most accessible, most frequently visited” therapeutic space for the surrounding neighbourhood.
Finally, let me recreate a scene that once made me laugh, for your shared amusement:
After buying some vegetables, a resident scanned a QR code to pay. The network was lagging, and it took a long while for the payment success message to appear. He shouted excitedly to the owner across the crowd: “It’s here! It’s gone through! Can you see it?”
The owner, busy weighing produce and collecting money from the queuing customers, responded with his usual half-smile: “Oh, it’s gone through, has it? Is that why you’re finally leaving?”
V. Bonus: Ways to Eat Radish Greens
Radish greens are highly nutritious, high in fibre, and rich in various vitamins. In folk medicine, they are often used as a remedy for dysentery, diarrhoea, coughing, haemorrhoids, bloating, and vomiting. Growing up in the countryside with a mother from the mountains, our diet was more “diverse” than those in the plains. Whenever we ate cowhide greens or radish greens, my relatives would mock us, calling us “pigs”. Today, radish greens have become a prized delicacy in the market, with prices higher than pea shoots—something those mocking relatives likely never imagined.
1. Stir-fried minced meat with pickled radish greens: This is a very appetising and quick seasonal dish. Typically, quick-pickled “diving” vegetables are used. Old-crock pickles can be lightly rinsed to reduce the salt content. I chop up the sour cowpeas and radishes sent by a friend’s mother, stir-fry them first with semi-lean minced pork, and add the chopped radish greens just before removing from the heat.
2. Cold tossed radish greens: Wash the radish greens and cut them into segments the length of a pinky finger. Blanch them, rinse in cooled boiled water, and drain. Add your favourite seasonings and toss well. Sichuan households always have red oil on hand; using the same method as cold tossed red oil chicken makes almost any vegetable taste delicious.
Editor: Xu Youyou