The Winter Crop of the Sand

The Shawo radish is not a variety that would do well just anywhere. It is grown around Xiaoshawo village in Xinkou town, in the south-west of Xiqing District, on ground that floodwater laid down as sand above and clay below, a profile the local account calls gold soil. Canal water is led onto the same fields. That combination has carried the crop for more than three hundred years, and it is also the reason the radish is named after a village rather than after the district: what makes it distinctive is a patch of ground a few kilometres across. The root is cylindrical, the skin green, the flesh translucent, and the taste sweet, hot, crisp and juicy at once.

Tianjin has a saying about it: the Shawo radish rivals a pear. The comparison is about texture as much as sweetness, since the radish is eaten raw and crisp in winter rather than cooked. From the 1930s it began to be exported to Hong Kong, Japan and Southeast Asia, which for a green winter vegetable grown on the edge of a northern plain is a considerable distance to travel. In the city's own account of its cooking, the Shawo radish appears in a list of local products that also includes chestnuts, pears, winter vegetables, cabbage, Xiaozhan rice and Chadian grapes, all of them attributed to the same geography and climate.

The modern history of the radish is a history of certification. In 2007 Xinkou town registered the Shawo certification mark with the national trademark office, defining the production area and quality standards. The crop has since been approved as a national geographical indication product, and its growing and storage skills have entered the Tianjin intangible cultural heritage list. In 2024 the brand entered the national agricultural brand programme, becoming the second Tianjin farm brand to do so after Xiaozhan rice, and in November of that year the town launched five marks and a code covering the geographical indication sign, the safe agricultural area sign, a Tianjin farm goods sign, the trademark and an anti-counterfeit code.