Hidden in plain sight: iconic, elegant, quintessentially Chinese—our jadeite 青菜 BOK CHOY
Ruby 嫦潔 White
Bok choy is an acquaintance. Like: we know each other, but we’ve never really hung out. I know how to cook her. I know she goes gooey and gelatinous when she’s cooked too long. I know the crew she rolls with: pak choy — the larger of the group, with its white stems and dark-green leaves — and shanghai bok choy — smol, tight and caterpillar emerald. That’s all I got. I don’t know their story either. Where were they born? Who are their parents? And when did they become synonymous with ‘Chinese-ness’? Bok choy 青菜 — who is she?
The earliest literary reference I was able to find was between the pages of 本草綱目 Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica), written in the 1500s. In it, author, scholar and scientist Li Shizhen talks about the medicinal benefits of bok choy due to her cooling properties. But bok choy had a life long before that, extensively cultivated for her leaves since the 5th century AD along the Yangtze River. Her ancestor is Brassica rapa. She is the child of a long lineage of turnips
and cabbages.
Only in the 1800s was bok choy, as we know it, introduced to Europe and North America, and later, in the 1900s, to Australia and Aotearoa — the seeds travelling in the bags and pockets of immigrating Chinese, most of whom were in the search for gold. In Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, bok choy is mentioned as one of a few “significant vegetable introductions” during the 1990s, featuring on “fashionable restaurant menus of the time”. I want to see these menus. Where are they? Are they lost? I am hungry for more.
Knowledge is hard to find. Call me a romantic, but I have really fantasised about unearthing bok choy legends and poetry and art that go beyond the feng shui pak choys that you can buy off Alibaba, mimicking jade, but cast from resin. I’ve found almost nothing, but
oh!
the whiffs I’ve sniffed!
As tantalising as wok hei bok choy w garlic, oyster sauce and MSG.
This knowledge barrier is one that I have become accustomed to. As an Australian-born, English-speaking Chinese-Malay Hakka, the majority of the information I have access to about Chinese culture is predominantly through its touchpoints with the Western world. There are more than 24 million hits on Google for ‘bok choy recipe’. But when you are trying to learn more about the vegetable itself, it’s the same regurgitated, uncited information coming through as copy-paste all over the internet. It is frustrating to see bok choy simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Supposedly, bok choy symbolises wealth, good luck and prosperity. I don’t mean disrespect, and I know this is a sweeping generalisation, but it feels like almost everything available to me in Chinese culture represents wealth, good luck and prosperity — or the exact opposite: death and cursed luck for eternity. Not that there’s anything wrong with so much conviction, and perhaps this says more about me and my disposable, capitalist, Western conditioning to feel this way, but it strikes me as a clear example of linguistically bereft biodiversity. It’s suspiciously reductive. You would assume a culture over 3,000 years old would be slightly more nuanced.
Bok choy’s ancestor Brassica rapa is known for its global versatility and dynamic resilience; bok choy inherited these qualities — she’s cultivated all over the world. For me, bok choy (or what some call Brassica chinensis) feels graciously emblematic of New Zealand Chinese immigrant communities and diaspora, in the sense that their intimate histories are invisible, held close and difficult to find.
Oceans away, on display at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, held inside a glass case, sits a national treasure. Tourists swarm, trying to catch a glimpse of a fist-sized piece of carved greenstone: 翠玉白菜, the jadeite bok choy, an exquisite display of Qing Dynasty artistry and Taoist philosophy. As one looks closely at the green and white stone, a katydid and locust emerge from the intricate folds like a magic eye. This is the most significant elevation of bok choy that I can find. The Museum explains that this combination of “plant and insect” in Chinese art can be seen in the landscape and nature paintings of previous dynasties. When I look at 翠玉白菜, it feels incredibly affirming to be able to physically see how our ancestors paid tribute and humbled themselves to nature, agriculture and artistic practice. Recognising and capturing the beauty of something as plain as bok choy, it shifts your appreciation for such a simple delight.
Elsewhere, Alvie McKree and Mei-Lin Te Puia Hansen have both shared their own versions of the same anecdote: that bok choy was often used in lieu of puha in boil-ups. Reflecting on the jadeite bok choy through an Aotearoa lens, I find myself projecting onto the katydid and locust a portrait of solidarity between tangata whenua and Chinese tau iwi represented by the two insects, living on the land. The greenstone vegetable embodies a shared approach to taonga, and a shared approach to values. Cindy’s work draws parallels between te takoha and 關係(guanxi), Māori and Chinese principles of giftgiving and reciprocity. In her research, she explains the importance of tong, a Chinese concept of ‘sameness’ or ‘shared’, as a necessary presence for a healthy relationship to flourish. Bok choy in boil-up is a sweet reminder of this.
Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist Chinese society is grounded in the ebb and flow of the natural world, committed to understanding its patterns in order to live in harmony with it. I can see how this worldview has similarities with te ao Māori, and I recognise other similarities between Chinese hospitality and manaakitanga. I often feel reluctant to draw parallels between New Zealand Chinese and Māori, because despite some shared values and histories of oppression, we are not the same. I tread carefully because I recognise the risk of homogenisation and the danger of disregarding certain privileges, such as the ‘model minority’ stereotype that directly benefited Chinese assimilation into Pākehā society, and which — while erasing many personal Chinese histories in Aotearoa — also protected and distanced Chinese diaspora from the more violent and enduring systems of oppression directed against tangata whenua. I tread carefully because we, as Chinese immigrants, have different responsibilities to the land, to its people. And yet. Despite this hesitation, I still have a desire to make connections. As diaspora, I sometimes yearn for the grounding of a ‘homeland’, the foundation of a mother tongue and a family that is now lost to time, lost across space. Many of the principles within te ao Māori resonate, and I find myself searching for histories and stories between Chinese and Māori in an attempt to feel tethered to something of this place. After three decades of assimilating to Western standards, aka trying to be white (when I am clearly NOT) I’ve realised I don’t want a seat at the table, but a room in the house. A place to be, a space to fill and share.
I do wonder which ‘original’ Chinese values have been lost, inherited or even strengthened because of the early kinship between immigrating Chinese and tangata whenua in the previous century. How does this manifest itself in Aotearoa today? One place I think it has been preserved is through food in the home — the culture and importance of freshness, healthy cooking, communal eating and providing kai to others still feels strong in many of the second-generation Chinese households I have encountered.
I explicitly feel this hunger and vitality at the Avondale Market, a vibrant ecosystem of so many ethnicities and hard-to-find, super-fresh, affordable produce. The market sits in stark contrast to our supermarket duopoly, and prompts me to consider the role the latter played in ‘preserving’ certain values through the exclusion of Indigenous and ‘Asian’ ingredients in their stores (with the exception of BOK CHOY cause she’s popular dammit!).
There is continued relevance and reliance on market gardens, for non-Pākehā communities in particular. Call me unimaginative, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. The facilitation of culture, community and togetherness that market gardens have fostered, from the 1800s right up to now, is what makes them so special and resilient. Against all odds, seeds were planted in this whenua and they flourished and nourished harmoniously. They didn’t become invasive.
I recognise bok choy’s ‘Chineseness’ as a marker for New Zealand Chinese immigrant history, a placeholder for diaspora now. Her story runs alongside us, deep and enduring.
You might look at bok choy as a model-minority vegetable. Hidden in plain sight. The polite side dish, patient and quiet. But I know her better than that now. She is a fighter and a survivor, her tender heart protected by her outer leaves. She may well symbolise wealth, good luck and prosperity. But through her adaptability, she also represents potential. Dreams of communal kai, and a way of living that honours the natural world. Through her, we are gifted a portal: to an awakened sense of who we are, and how we might belong.
Ruby 嫦潔White is a Chinese-Malay Hakka and Australian-Pākehā creative currently living and working in Tāmaki Makaurau. In 2021 Ruby was the recipient of the Enjoy Summer Residency in Pōneke, where they researched and developed ceramic charcoal bbqs. They hope to continue deepening their understanding of identity and belonging through their ceramic and food practice.