Pickle, a kind of traditional Chinese food, is a cold dish produced by pickling fresh materials with salt, soy and specially-made sauce. Located at the Liangshidian Street, east of Dazhalan in Qianmen of Beijing, Liubiju Pickle Shop is the oldest and most renowned store of its kind in Beijing, the main products including sweet radish pickle, sweet cucumber pickle, sweet field snail pickle, sugar garlic and others. These pickles have bright color and rich flavor and is crisp and tender.

Liubiju Pickle is “China’s Time-honored Brand”, enjoying a history of over 400 years. It was originally created in the 9th year during Emperor Jiajing’s Reign of the Ming Dynasty (1530 A.D.) and was a small store of brothers surnamed Zhao in Xishe Village, Linfen of Shanxi Province. Later, it specially dealt with pickle business. It is said that the big horizontal board with golden characters hanging in the Liubiju Store was the inscription of the famous scholar Yansong of the Ming Dynasty.

The pickles in Liubiju have carefully-chosen materials and strict processing procedures. Natural saucing method is adopted and abided by strictly. All materials come from fixed places. For example, soybeans are purchased from Majuqiao of Fengrun County, Hebei Province and Yongle Store of Tongzhou, and the wheat flour are from Laishui County in west Beijing City. Besides, strict operation regulations are developed for the production of pickles to ensure the quality. For instance, to make a can of cucumber pickle, first select six pieces of fresh cucumber (500g) produced in Daxing, Beijing; then, pickle the cucumber in self-made sauce for about ten days to get the final products.

Thanks to the fine management and high quality, Liubiju has been enjoying high reputation for centuries among the general public. Now, it is the largest enterprise in the pickle food industry with sales network distributed throughout the country and over a dozen of overseas countries and regions.

Source: kaleidoscope.cultural-china.com