Source:
https://scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2186344/chinese-students-sell-cabbage-rose-valentines-day-gift-thats-all
China/ People & Culture

Chinese students sell ‘cabbage rose’ Valentine’s Day gift that’s all heart

  • Nanjing Agricultural University professor developed the hybrid ‘yellow rose’ when he was trying to boost the vitamin C content of the napa variety
  • The highly nutritious vegetable can also withstand very low temperatures

A Chinese university team had a fresh offering for Valentine’s Day this year – a hybrid cabbage variety that “blooms” in the shape of a rose.

After it was promoted by students online, the highly nutritious “yellow rose” sold out within a day, Shanghai-based Thepaper.cn reported on Thursday.

A cross between a napa cabbage and a yellow heart cabbage, it was developed by Hou Xilin, a professor from Nanjing Agricultural University’s horticulture college.

Hou told the news website he had spent 36 years studying the oblong-shaped napa and creating new varieties of cabbage. He said the “yellow rose” was developed accidentally when he tried to double the vitamin C content of the napa in 2000 by creating a new hybrid.

The vegetables have been dubbed “cabbage roses” by Chinese media. Photo: Weibo
The vegetables have been dubbed “cabbage roses” by Chinese media. Photo: Weibo

This year, Hou put together a team of students to package his latest crop of rose-shaped cabbages into bouquets and market them in time for February 14.

Dubbed “cabbage roses” by Chinese media, they were featured in a video that had more than 1.4 million views on video-sharing platform Miaopai, and the idea has proved popular on social media.

“If the gift doesn’t work, just bring it home for a hotpot – and if it works, you can have the hotpot together,” one person wrote on microblogging site Weibo.

“Turn it into a spicy cabbage so they become red roses,” suggested another.

The cabbage roses were priced at 15 yuan (US$2.20) online and 10 yuan (US$1.50) offline, one of the student entrepreneurs told Thepaper.cn.

That is three to four times more expensive than a regular cabbage, but the students had no trouble selling them. All 300 were sold in a day, and they had more orders rolling in, according to the report. Profits will be shared among team members.

Hou said it was a good opportunity for the students to get an understanding of the entire process, from growing produce to marketing.

Hou Xilin said production of the “yellow rose” had been ramped up this year, with a crop of about 20,000 planted. Photo: Weibo
Hou Xilin said production of the “yellow rose” had been ramped up this year, with a crop of about 20,000 planted. Photo: Weibo

Cabbage is a staple vegetable in Chinese cuisine. Aside from looking like a rose, Hou’s hybrid has two other important features – he said it could withstand very low temperatures and was highly nutritious.

“Our aim was to develop a high-yield cabbage with strong disease resistance,” he told Thepaper.cn. “Quality of life is higher these days – people don’t just talk about eating until they’re full, they want to eat well. So we’re not just trying to get a bigger yield but better nutritional value.”

The vegetable can cope with temperatures down to minus 9.6 degrees Celsius (14.72 Fahrenheit) whereas cabbages usually cannot tolerate anything below about minus 4 degrees Celsius (24.8 Fahrenheit), according to the report.

It also contains three times the level of vitamin C than other cabbages at 156 micrograms per 100 grams.

Hou said the “yellow rose” had been available for consumers to buy since 2016 on a small scale but production had been ramped up this year, with about 20,000 of the vegetables planted.

“We expect even more interest next year when we plan to offer yellow roses as potted plants. Then they can be decorative as well, and harvested and eaten whenever you want,” he told Thepaper.cn, adding that purple and black varieties may also be introduced in the future.