Expert: AliMcJ - 5/8/2004

Question
 A have a friend who has a carving of two obviously Asian children astride an leafy, long stalked vegetable, which I assume is a Cabbage, as the English inscription reads " Two Kids & a Cabbage ". There is also some Calligraphy on the bottom of the carving which is either a very dense wood, or stone. Could you please tell me the origin & is there some kind of a myth or fable involved?

          Many thanks....Jim Bridges  

Answer
It sounds like a lucky New Year piece, probably jade.

Cabbage is a common motif for jade carving, as it can incorporate the white and the green from the jade (jadeite/Burmese Jade).  Cabbage is the same as old slang here "Money."  Eating cabbage (or other greens, like spinach) on New Year is supposed to insure wealth in the coming year.  The children are usually seen playing on the God of Happiness (the fat god with many children crawling over him) or holding up a Peach, which is a symbol of Long Life.

The cabbage  you see is a long one, right?  That is called Napa Cabbage in the U.S. (it is grown in Napa county -- and more now -- many Japanese had farms in the central valley and up).  In Chinese (Mandarin) it is called "Bai Tsai", which is "white vegetable" or "white greens"  -- in Cantonese, it is pronounced similar to what we see called "Bok Choi" -- they all refer to a "cabbage" with white stems and green leaves -- the Napa Cabbage, the large Bok Choi and the small Bok Choi  (Chinese is written the same but pronounced differently in different dialects; Cantonese was the dialect to which Americans were first introduced, so many things are with the Cantonese sound).  Mandarin Chinese is the official standard for language.

Dense wood or maybe stone? Could this all be a soapstone carving?