Crunchy, tangy, sweet or sour-they are a cornerstone of Chinese cuisine

After a month of feasting, the Spring Festival binging is slowly winding down. Many are now eating light, to recover from the overindulgence and rich foods. In our family, we're raiding the pantry and digging deep into the pickle jars.

Pickles.

From the sour pickled whole cabbages in the north to the salted radishes in the center and south, pickles are a major part of every branch of cuisine in China.

Pickles may be sweet, sour, tart, pungent or salty and their making may involve the fermenting of vegetables, fruit, meat or fish-depending on what's available and abundant.

The range is wide and varied and pickles may be eaten on their own, or used as seasoning. Often, they are the result of frugality, used as a means of preserving extra food that cannot be eaten at once.

In days past when logistics limited the distribution of green vegetables in the cold seasons, pickling was one way to keep vegetables on the menu.

In certain provinces like Sichuan in the southwest, glass pickle pots are specially designed and may hold anything from pig trotters and chicken claws to chunks of crisp cabbages, carrots, cucumbers, celery hearts and radishes-always spiced with the region's tongue-numbing peppercorns and chili peppers.

The Sichuan pickles are crisp and fresh and depend on a natural fermentation nurtured by the hot, humid climate. Once the first batch is successfully produced, the pickling brine is carefully preserved, so successive lots can be kickstarted with ease.

The main spice used here is the Sichuan peppercorn, which is not a pepper at all, but the dried fruit pods of the native prickly ash. It is so spicy that it has almost anesthetic properties.

Blanched chicken claws are a delicacy dropped into the pickle pots with small fiery chili peppers, crisp carrot and radish sticks and plenty of salt and sugar. They may not appeal to Western palates, but they are a favorite snack for many Chinese, easily available even in convenience stores all over the country.

Further south, in Yunnan, the appetites of ethnic minorities in the province are whetted by a kaleidoscope of pickles that may range from finely sliced gingers, bulbs of leeks, tender roots of bellflowers to broad beans and soya beans.

The colorful platters appear as side dishes on the dining table and are enjoyed with the staple rice noodles and pancakes, also made with rice flour. Again, they are bright red with powdered or crushed chili peppers.

Another popular pickle ingredient is the white Chinese radish. They are salted and dried whole, cut into batons and dried, or roughly minced and pickled.

These radishes are popular in a swathe of provinces ranging from Guangdong and Guangxi, Hubei and Hunan right across to Hebei and Henan, and are used to supplement stir-fries or soups, or used as tasty side dishes.

Spicy mustard green, a normally bitter-tasting vegetable when it is fresh, is preserved in brine all across south and central China to produce more regional specialties. It is seldom eaten on its own, but has become a seasoning ingredient that has spawned many famous dishes.

In the Hakka communities in Fujian and Guangdong provinces, a dried, sweet version is steamed slowly with pork belly to produce the signature meicai kourou.

Elsewhere, a tart pickled cabbage is cooked with fish to produce another famous dish-suan cai yu.

As our culinary journey heads further north, the importance of pickles increases.

The reason is simple. In the cold harsh winters in the northeast, the only way to eat any vegetables at all was to pickle them in advance. Although modern logistics mean that fresh produce can now be transported to every corner of China in almost every season, the preserving of vegetables is still very much an annual ritual.

Whole cabbages are pickled in Ali Baba urns large enough to hide a grown man. After some maturing, the vegetables would have turned tart and pungent and can then be sliced thinly and cooked in winter hotpots with thin slices of meat, and handfuls of mung bean vermicelli.

We all know kimchi, that famous vegetable pickle normally associated with Korean cuisine. Few people realize that the Korean ethnicity also live as an ethnic group in the northern most regions of China.

Here, before the winter cold hardens the ground, enormous amounts of vegetables are turned into urns of pickles and stored in cellars beneath the earth.

Entire neighborhoods turn out to help one another prepare the season's store of pickles and the occasion may be lifted with spirited songs and dances.

China may have expanding pockets of rapid urbanization, but even as city and country integrate in what is still largely an agrarian nation, regional pickles often offer migrant workers of every level something they miss the most-a taste of home.

Sichuan-style Vegetable Pickles

This is an easy recipe which we often prepare at home. Once you have the starter batch fully matured, you can keep adding more ingredients to the jar for a continuing supply of crisp pickles.

・ 1 round cabbage, hard core removed and cut into wedges

・ 2 carrots and 1 whole radish, peeled and cut into batons

・ Celery stalks, cut into sticks

Pickling mix:

・ 1 star anise, 1 stick cinnamon and 1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns

・ 3 or 4 small bird's eye chili peppers

Hot boiling water

・ Salt

・ Prepare a large pickling jar by sterilizing it with boiling water.

・ Allow more hot water to cool and then add to the jar.

・ Add some salt to make a very light brine,

・ When the liquid is completely cool, add the prepared vegetables.

・ Keep the jar in a dark, relatively warm place to allow the fermentation to start.

・ During summer, all it takes is a couple of days for the liquid to sour.

・ You will see tiny bubbles around the edge of the jar.

・ Taste, and if you think the vegetables are tart enough, transfer the jar into the fridge to slow further fermentation. The pickles also taste better cold.

Easy Cucumber Pickles

This is especially good in summer when cucumbers are plentiful. The pickles keep for about a week in the fridge but should be best eaten fresh.

・ Two or three dark green cucumbers

・ Salt

・ 1 apple or pear, skinned and grated

・ 1 small carrot, grated

・ 1 tbsp fish sauce

・ 1 tbsp chili powder

・ 2 cloves garlic, minced

・ Scatter a generous amount of salt on a cutting board and roll the cucumbers around on top of the salt, pressing down as you roll.

・ Place the cucumbers aside for 30 minutes. Then rinse and dry and cut into 5 cm chunks.

・ Cut a cross on one end of the cucumber chunk. This is where the pickling mix will be stuffed into.

・ Combine grated apple or pear, grated carrot, fish sauce, minced garlic and chili powder together. Season to taste with a little salt and sugar. Allow to rest for 10 minutes.

・ Spread open the cut end of the cucumber and fill with pickling mix. Set aside in the fridge for an hour or two, and the pickle is ready.

Domestic traveling brought a total of 5.13 trillion yuan ($761 billion) in revenue to the tourism sector last year, registering a 12-percent increase compared with 2017, according to the ministry.

Between Feb 4 and 10, China recorded 415 million trips made by tourists and grossed nearly 514 billion yuan in tourism revenue, up 7.6 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively, year-on-year, the Chinese Tourism Academy said.

The Ministry of Commerce said last week the country's retail and catering industries garnered more than 1 trillion yuan in sales during the week-long Spring Festival holiday, an increase of 8.5 percent from the same period of last year.

With growing cultural consumption demand by residents, China saw its per-capita expenditure on consumption of educational, cultural and entertainment products increase 6.7 percent to 2,226 yuan in 2018, accounting for 11 percent of per-capita consumption expenditure, said the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

People's cultural and tourism consumption expenditure continued to increase and has evolved to become a new economic growth area, according to ministry officials.

They told media the supply of quality cultural and tourism products during the holiday has improved a lot, and called for efforts to promote winter sports and springwater tours.