A farmer harvests green beans at a vegetable production base in Yantai, East China's Shandong Province, on August 21, 2024. Photo: VCG

A viral internet joke about eating raw green beans for weight loss has recently put the humble vegetable in the spotlight. After news reports that a guy lost weight following food poisoning caused by undercooked beans, Chinese netizens jokingly dubbed them a "forbidden weight-loss hack." Others took the joke even further, asking — tongue firmly in cheek — exactly how undercooked the beans needed to be to achieve the "best weight loss effect."

For residents of East China's Shandong Province, however, green beans have never been a miracle diet food or an internet meme. Instead, they are an unmistakable sign that summer has arrived — and, for many families, the beginning of weeks of eating them, giving them away and wondering how on earth there are still more waiting to be picked.

The season of endless beans 

For Zhao Qian, a Shandong native, summer has always had a familiar color: green.

"When I was little, the moment different bean dishes started appearing on the table day after day, I knew summer had arrived," Zhao told the Global Times. "No matter how many we ate, there were always more. It was as if the vines kept producing beans overnight."

A Chinese saying goes, "Eating beans in summer is better than eating meat." Heat-loving green beans have been cultivated in China for more than one thousand years. Originally introduced from abroad, they gradually found a permanent place on Chinese dining tables thanks to their versatility, nutritional value and ability to fill hungry stomachs, according to an article published by People.cn.

Today, with the rise of greenhouse farming and an increasingly sophisticated cold-chain logistics network, fresh vegetables are available year-round across China. The old rule of eating produce only in season has largely given way to year-round abundance. Yet in Shandong, China's largest vegetable-producing province, green beans remain inseparable from summer. More than an endless seasonal harvest, they have become the taste of home for generations of locals.

One of Zhao's strongest childhood memories wasn't eating the beans, but preparing them. 

"Every summer, the adults would hand me a basin full of freshly picked beans and ask me to strip off the tough strings along both sides," she recalled. "I'd sit on a little stool and work through the whole pile. It looked like an easy job, but after peeling bean after bean, my fingertips would start to hurt. By the time I finished one basin, there was always another one waiting."

For many families in Shandong, summer means an endless cycle of picking, eating and sharing green beans. In vegetable gardens, rows of trellises are soon covered in climbing vines. When the peak harvest season arrives, the beans need to be picked almost every day before they become old and fibrous. Those that cannot be finished at home are packed into bags and given to relatives, neighbors and friends.

"Your family has beans, and so does mine, but we still give them to each other," Cao Yu, a Shandong native who grew up on the Jiaodong Peninsula in East China, told the Global Times on Wednesday with a laugh. 

A plentiful harvest also brings what locals jokingly call "bean freedom" to the dinner table. Sesame-dressed beans, braised beans with pork ribs and, above all, bean-filled steamed buns — a dish mentioned by almost every Shandong native interviewed by the Global Times. For many people, these dishes are no longer simply seasonal food, but the familiar taste of summer, family and hometown.

The hands that harvest summer 

Behind the seemingly endless harvest is another busy summer ritual — picking. For many elderly farmers, harvesting green beans means spending hours each day moving from one trellis to another, reaching through dense vines and picking bean after bean by hand.

A nail salon in Jining, Shandong Province, recently went viral after offering free "bean-picking manicures" to residents aged 60 and above. Instead of fashionable designs or glittering decorations, the salon applies thicker, longer nail extensions that make it easier to pinch and snap off the beans while protecting fingertips from pain. A coat of colored polish is added simply to help conceal stains left by vegetable sap, according to video clips circulating on Chinese social media platforms Douyin and Sina Weibo. 

The salon owner, herself the daughter of farmers, said thumb injuries and damaged fingernails are common during the bean-picking process. In videos posted on her Douyin account, many elderly women said the manicures made picking beans much easier. Even more amusingly, some older men initially refused to get a manicure, only to change their minds after hearing enthusiastic recommendations from the "grandmas' group."

For perhaps the first time, beauty took a back seat to practicality, and a manicure became another way of caring for hardworking hands.

While the internet continues to joke about undercooked beans as a shortcut to weight loss, doctors stress there is nothing amusing about eating them raw. Liang Jiajing, a clinical nutritionist at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, said raw or undercooked beans contain naturally occurring toxins that can cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea, but the toxins are destroyed through thorough cooking, according to a Jimu News report. 

The internet may remember green beans as the latest viral "weight-loss hack." In Shandong, however, they tell very different stories — one of overflowing harvests, bags of beans exchanged between neighbors, family recipes passed down through generations, and hardworking hands that quietly bring the harvest to the table. Long after the online jokes fade, the taste of summer — and of home — remains.