Chinese pickles are very different and can be divided into two categories: northern and southern. The northern flavor is represented by Beijing. The "big gourd" in Liubiju, Tianyuan and Houmen are all very good. "Big Gourd" A large gourd hangs over the door to commemorate it, but it seems to be gone now. Baoding pickles are famous, but they are not much different from Beijing pickles. The southern flavor is represented by Yangzhou pickles, with the trademarks "Sanhe" and "Simei". Pickles in the north are salty, while pickles in the south are sweet. It seems like everything in China can be made into sauce. Radishes, melons, lettuce, garlic sprouts, manna, lotus roots, and even peanuts, walnuts, and almonds are all indispensable for sauce. There are pickles in Beijing pickles, but I still don’t know what they are. Only water chestnuts cannot be sauced. In my hometown, it is not popular to go to the soy sauce garden and say "buy soy water chestnuts". That is an insult.

I can’t figure out when pickles originated. Not very early. Because there is a prerequisite for making pickles, you must first have sauce, ---- sauce made from soybeans. Sauce - soy sauce, is a great invention in China. "Firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea", sauce is one of the seven things that open the door. Most Chinese dishes use soy sauce. The West does not. A Peking Opera actor went abroad. When he came back, he summarized his experience and warned his peers that if he has the opportunity to go abroad in the future, he must bring a box of solid soy sauce! Without Pixian Douban, "authentic Sichuan flavor" would not be possible. But the sauce in ancient China and the sauce today are not fermented meat sauce. "Zhou Rites. Tianguan. Shanfu" says: "Every king's gift can be used in twenty jars of sauce." Zheng Xuan notes: "Jiang is also called fermented glutinous rice." Both fermented glutinous rice and fermented glutinous rice are meat sauce. Probably the one that appeared earlier was fermented soybean, and later became the current sauce. Doujiang is mentioned in Han Dynasty writings. "Qi Min Yao Shu" mentions soy sauce, but it was already in the Northern Wei Dynasty, more than 1,500 years ago

----Of course, this is quite ancient.