Most commonly understood Chinese translation for Pak choi / bok choy

[Christa]

Yes, it is indeed like a Fawlty Towers episode.

 

And actually I do feel a bit like Manuel when dealing with this.

 

Is there anything else in Chinese where there is such a lack of standardisation of terms?

[abcdefg]

5 hours ago, Christa said:

Is there anything else in Chinese where there is such a lack of standardisation of terms?

 

Yes, afraid so. The world of fruits and vegetables here has many such issues. And the names of fish. And the names for cuts of meat.

 

Often there is no one "definitive" name that is accepted everywhere. Just a bundle of regionalisms, with one or two being somewhat more common. I read lots of recipes in original Chinese and routinely watch a couple of cooking shows and am struck by that over and over.

 

If I go to the store to locate an ingredient that I have heard about on TV or read about on-line, I may get a blank, glassy-eyed stare as if I had asked for a beaker of radioactive plutonium.

 

And when one tries to link up an English name for this or that Chinese item, the problem is compounded a hundred fold because the English name that is most often seen in Western Canada will be different from the one best known in New York or in London. Lots of these naming conventions have been influenced by migration patterns. Chinese people speaking this or that regional language or dialect back in the "old country" will transplant their favorite names for things and eventually adapt them into English.

 

All this is one of the several reasons I like family-style restaurants here. You walk to a display case in the rear of the dining room, near the kitchen and select the ingredients you want to eat. A senior waitress will help you decide on a method of preparation. This gets around the problem of "menu language" in which you are required to mentally decode the meaning of mysteriously colorful dish names like "Buddha's Delight" or "Emperor's Feast."

[imron]

15 hours ago, 陳德聰 said:

I think you'd get the most mileage out of 奶白菜 and 上海白菜 but I have not been North much

For reference, in 6 years of living there I never heard either of those terms in Northern China.  That second picture (with the greener stems) I would have called 油菜, see for example 香菇油菜.  Edit: And at least one person online from Northern China agrees with me (although other people in the thread from different areas say different things).

 

Honestly, probably the easiest thing to do is just have pictures of these on your phone, or printed out in your purse/bag.  You can then ask the waitress what they call that, and you'll end up learning all the regional variations of their names.

[Christa]

abcdefg, imron, I think you have both offered some very sage advice.

 

The translation you've provided is interesting, imron, as it's used in Taiwan for choy sum. I wonder why some northern Chinese consider pak choi / bok choy to be oily?

 

Well, this is an interesting, if frustrating topic. I may have to start another thread to deal with some of these issues...

[Publius]

1 hour ago, imron said:

For reference, in 6 years of living there I never heard either of those terms in Northern China.  That second picture (with the greener stems) I would have called 油菜, see for example 香菇油菜. 

老鄉見老鄉，兩眼淚汪汪啊~

In most Mandarin speaking regions (Shanghai is not one), 白菜 means 大白菜, and 青菜 means any green vegetable. The European type garden variety cabbage is quite aptly called 圓白菜, or 洋白菜 by older people.

I bet imron doesn't know what to call the variety in the first picture. Neither do I. It's not local. It's neither 大白菜 nor 小白菜.

The easiest way to find out the most common name(s) of a plant is to go to its English Wikipedia page , follow through the link at the bottom of the left panel to its Chinese page.

In that page it is mentioned that the Cantonese bok choy is called 油菜 in the North. And this Cantonese dictionary agrees.

It's called 油菜 because its seed is used for oil pressing, or because Northerners conflate it with the yellow flower bearing plant you see everywhere in the South -- just like Cantonese people, who likely haven't the chance to see any snowfall in their lifetime and thus couldn't tell the difference, call 冰棍->雪條 and 冰箱->雪櫃.

If you're further interested in the difference between 小白菜 and 油菜, a Baidu search will tell you that basically 油菜 has smooth, darker colored leaves, the stems are whiter and have a distinct spoon like shape.

I guess it's quite understandable that the more common a thing is, the more closely tied it is to people's daily life, the more likely it will have a variety of local names that resist any effort of standardization. It is well known that Americans can't agree on what to call a pop/soda/coke. And they don't have seven languages all under the umbrella name of Chinese.

[Christa]

Hi Publius,

 

This is so useful, thank you!

 

So can I just make sure I've understood correctly.

 

This type is unfamiliar to you:

 

 

Is that right?

 

And this next type below...

 

 

... is a vegetable that people in Beijing / the North would call 油菜.

 

Is that right? 

[Publius]

Yes, that's right.

[Christa]

That is very interesting.

 

In Taiwan 油菜 is choy sum.

 

Just to check, in Beijing is Choy sum 菜心?

[imron]

3 hours ago, Publius said:

I bet imron doesn't know what to call the variety in the first picture

Spot on!  There's a reason I only mentioned the second one

 

The first one just isn't all that common in the North.  The second one however is very common.

 

[Christa]

That's interesting to know, Imron, as the first type is very common in the south and also in Cantonese restaurants overseas. Probably this geographical division regarding the varieties cultivated has had an impact on what they are called. 

 

In Taiwan, the situation is like the north, in that it's the second, green stemmed type that you tend to find there. The first, whiter type is rarely seen and people aren't sure what to call it. It's also curious that in Taiwan, the second, greener stemmed type is known as 青江菜. When they use the term 油菜, they mean this:

 

 

Which I think should be spelled choy sum in English. On the mainland it's called 菜心, isn't it?

[Zbigniew]

41 minutes ago, Christa said:

On the mainland it's called 菜心, isn't it?

Doing an image search for this term I get lots of pics of what I and others I know call 芥兰. Can we nail the difference (if there is one) between 菜心/油菜 and 芥兰?

[Christa]

That's interesting. Putting 芥兰 into google images, I would say that 芥兰 and 菜心 are the same thing: choi sum.

 

油菜 also refers to this same vegetable, choi sum, in Taiwan.

 

However, from what's been said in this thread, if you use 油菜 in the north of Mainland China, it does not refer to choi sum but rather to green stemmed pak choi / bok choy.

 

Does that seem right to everyone?

[陳德聰]

@imron @Publius

I am curious though, as to whether someone in the north who calls it 油菜 can infer what is meant if someone says 上海白菜 or 上海青 or 青江菜. Just like how if you ask for 番茄 and the person normally would call it 西紅柿, they'd still be able to connect 番茄 and 西紅柿 as being the same thing. Because if you try to say 油菜 in the south you can bet you're not getting what you want because there's already another vegetable called that.

 

@Christa

You might have noticed one of my pictures in the supermarket was labelled 油菜. I suspect that people who are not Cantonese would call that same vegetable 菜心? In my understanding 菜心 is a type of "油菜" (the 油 is related to rapeseed which is used for oil) and so sometimes "choy sum" is used to refer to what is labelled as 油菜, but I've seen people write "yu choy" or "yow choy" which... are both Cantonese pronunciation transcribed.

 

芥蘭 is 100% not the same as "choy sum". 芥蘭 is "gai lan/kai lan" and can be distinguished from "choy sum" by comparing their flowers or their shape (also their taste but I don't advise chomping on them raw in the market). Choy sum has yellow flowers, gai lan has white flowers (and maybe also some yellow but there will be white); choy sum is skinnier and gai lan is thicker.

[Publius]

10 minutes ago, 陳德聰 said:

whether someone in the north who calls it 油菜 can infer what is meant if someone says 上海白菜 or 上海青 or 青江菜

I honestly don't know what these terms refer to. You'll have to show me a picture for me to make the connection lol.

[陳德聰]

1 minute ago, Publius said:

I honestly don't know what these terms refer to.

 

I am fascinated, but also at the same time curious about how much cooking you do/how much vegetable exposure you get aside from eating them  how about 矮矮圓圓的小白菜 haha does it look like 油菜 in your mind?

[Christa]

For what it's worth, 油菜 is always choy sum in Taiwan. It surprised me that it was used for green stemmed pak choi in northern China, as it seemed to me that 油菜 would more likely be some form of oil seed rape but it seems that this only applies in Taiwan and from what 陳德聰 is saying possibly in the Cantonese speaking areas too.

 

My conclusion now is that, in order to be understood everywhere for pak choi / bok choy, you would need to begin with 白菜 in the south in order to get the white stemmed variety but then, as you got further north, you would need to order the green stem variety, using 青江菜 in central China and Taiwan and then 油菜 once you got further north.

 

My feeling is that, in the north, they simply won't be ordering much white stem bok choy.

[Publius]

@陳德聰Haha, people do sometimes confuse 小白菜 with 油菜 (both in northern terms). But I can tell them apart since maybe college?

I cook for myself. Not everyday, but quite often. The exposure however is not expansive. Unlike our great adventurer in the culinary world, abcdefg, I tend to stick to the ones I know.

[evn108]

Another leafy green vegetable question... to me this is the weirdest, and might just be that it has lots of names in Taiwan? 大陸妹，A菜, 萵筍, 萵苣.... are these all the same vegetable?

[Lu]

I have nothing to add, but I find this thread very informative. I now realise why I always found 白菜 such a difficult word to translate: it's not just that both my kitchen Chinese and my kitchen Dutch are underdeveloped, it's legitimately complicated.

[Christa]

3 hours ago, 陳德聰 said:

You might have noticed one of my pictures in the supermarket was labelled 油菜. I suspect that people who are not Cantonese would call that same vegetable 菜心? In my understanding 菜心 is a type of "油菜" (the 油 is related to rapeseed which is used for oil) and so sometimes "choy sum" is used to refer to what is labelled as 油菜, but I've seen people write "yu choy" or "yow choy" which... are both Cantonese pronunciation transcribed.

 

Yes, I've seen it labelled as that too. It does seem that they are the two main names for choy sum - "vegetable heart" and "oil vegetable". The latter makes the most sense to me but seems to be the least widely used, confident to Cantonese areas and Taiwan, although I suppose Fujian may also use it. It's a pain that "oil vegetable" means green stemmed pak choi in the north.