Sun-dried Vegetables a delicious foodstuff in Shaoxing, is fragrant with a pleasant aftertaste. According to "A Tourist Guide to Shaoxing', almost every household here makes dried vegetables.

Sun-baking vegetables is a common practice in the countryside or in the city. Even overseas Chinese are fond of doing this. Dried vegetables include dried Chinese cabbage, dried rape, dried leaf mustard, the last being the best. With "bainao jiecai"(meaning leaf mustard of hundred brains), we are able to make an extremely tasty variety, because this leaf mustard gets a lot of cores and the stalks are both long and narrow. Reaped at the right time, the tender and fresh leaf mustard is salted and sun-tanned. When being steamed, it turns increasingly amber black and increasingly tender and aromatic. In the old days, when farmers or craftsmen go out for work, they usually carry in their rice baskets some steamed dried vegetable, as it's appetizing and easy to bring with.

It is said that if we put the dried vegetable in the rice trays in the hottest summer, the rice won't spoil. Salted and sun-baked properly, we can have dried vegetables full of amino acids and tasting authentic. If we put then into a sealed earthen jar for some time, it will radiate mouth-watering fragrance when being unsealed. Besides being a non-staple food at table, it can help make various top dishes such as stewed chicken; oil baked bamboo shoots, stewed fish and steamed bean curd. In summer when we prepare a soup with dried vegetable and dried tender Bamboo shoots, it'll increase saliva, help us to ward off heat stroke and give us invigoration.