Chinese pickles

Chinese pickles or Chinese preserved vegetables consist of various vegetables or fruits that have been fermented by pickling with salt and brine (simplified Chinese: 咸菜; traditional Chinese: 鹹菜; pinyin: Xiáncài), or marinated in mixtures based on soy sauce or savory bean pastes (酱菜; 醬菜; jiàngcài). The former is usually done using high-fiber vegetables and fruits, such as Chinese cabbage, carrot, apple and pineapple, while the latter marinated group is made using a wide variety of vegetables, ranging from mustards and cucumbers to winter melon and radishes. As of now, there are more than 130 kinds of pickles.

Chinese pickles have a long history that dates back to 1100 B.C.E., during the Zhou dynasty. The word “pickle”, “tsu ('zi' in Pinyin)” in Chinese, means “salt and incubate”. The pickled vegetables and fruit we refer to today date in practice back to the sixth century B.C.E. Ancient people pickled mainly to preserve their vegetables and fruit because pickling preserves food far past the natural date of expiration. Foods would often be pickled during the harvest season for consumption during later parts of the year.

Chinese pickles all need to balance the flavors of sweet, sour, pungent, salt, bitter and savory. There are also spicy pickles with floral notes, such as the Szechuan pepper. However, most Chinese pickles still aim for a balance between the tastes of vinegar, salt, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, hot chili, sugar, and the vegetable or fruit itself. Most pickles need to wait for a few months for the vegetables and fruit to ferment. There are also "quickles"—a portmanteau of "quick" and "pickles"—that people can eat them after a few hours or a few days. Cucumber pickles, for example, may be eaten after they have been pickled in a jar for three hours.

...
Wikipedia