When was the sweet potato introduced to China?
The sweet potato is also known as sweet potato, red sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, and so on. It is an annual herbaceous plant of the order Tubiflorae, family Convolvulaceae, rich in protein, starch, pectin, cellulose, amino acids, vitamins, and various minerals, and has a reputation as a “longevity food,” but the sweet potato's place of origin is not China. Let us take a look below at when the sweet potato entered China!
When did the sweet potato enter China?
The sweet potato originated in Mexico and the tropical Americas from Colombia and Ecuador to Peru. By the early 16th century, sweet potatoes were already widely cultivated in Spain, and Spanish sailors carried sweet potatoes to Manila and the Moluccas in the Philippines, and then spread them to various parts of Asia. The sweet potato was introduced to China around the late 16th century, brought from the South Seas into Fujian and Guangdong in China, and then spread to the Yangtze River and Yellow River basins and Taiwan Province and other places. Today, China's sweet potato planting area and total output both rank first in the world.
Where are China's sweet potato producing areas?
China's sweet potato producing areas are mainly distributed in Beijing, Shanxi, Shandong, Henan, Tianjin, Hebei, the three northeastern provinces, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei, Gansu, Anhui, Fujian, Shaanxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Hainan and other places. The main producing areas are respectively Sixian in Anhui (China's home of sweet potatoes), Hebei (Lulong, Qinglong), Liancheng in Fujian, Kaifeng in Henan, Dengzhou, Tongzhaipu in Tanghe, Sishui in Shandong, Nanchong in Sichuan, Yibin and other areas.
The impact of the sweet potato's introduction on China
The introduction of the sweet potato improved the living conditions of people in China at the time and became the food on which people depended for survival. When Zheng Chenggong's fleet was trapped by a typhoon and he ordered grain to be gathered in Penghu, the grain officer told him that locally there was “only sweet potato.” Afterward, in the early years of the Kangxi reign, records of sweet potato cultivation in Wenzhou, Zhejiang and Chaoshan, Guangdong also began to appear gradually, and within the span of two generations it became the main food of the red soil belt of the southeast, “relied upon for people's livelihood” and “relied upon for survival in droughts, floods, and poor harvests.”