White delights

Grilled white asparagus with salmon (above) at Feast restaurant.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Zhang likes white asparagus in soup and in dumplings, though as he talks today, he and his colleague, head chef Rob Cunningham, have fancier presentations in mind. They deftly sort the stalks for uniformity and prepare two colorful dishes－a salad with festoons of slivered raw asparagus, and a platter of grilled asparagus with salmon. A handful of uncooked spears bundled with a cheerful orange ribbon appears as a table decoration.

Because the white grows more slowly without sunlight, Zhang says, the stalks are thicker but more tender than green asparagus.

"It's very healthy," he adds, though conceding that some say green asparagus is healthier because of its exposure to sunlight.

Shandong's Caoxian county, known as China's capital of asparagus, boasts a growing area of more than 13,000 hectares devoted to the crop.

In 2014, the green and white asparagus crops earned more than $200 million in exports.