Napa cabbage when used as food. The Japanese name for this specific variety of cabbage is hakusai (), a Sino-Japanese reading of the Chinese name "báicài" (), literally "white vegetable". The Korean name for napa cabbage, baechu (), is a nativized word from the Sino-Korean reading, "baekchae", of the same Chinese character sets. Today in Mandarin Chinese, napa cabbage is known as dàbáicài (), literally "big white vegetable", as opposed to the "small white vegetable" that is known in English as bok choy. Outside of Asia, this vegetable is also referred to as Chinese cabbage. Regionally, it is also known as sui
Fat choy This may be one reason why some commercially available fat choy has been found to be adulterated with strands of a non-cellular starchy material, with other additives and dyes. Real fat choy is dark green in color, while the counterfeit fat choy appears black. The last two syllables of this name in Cantonese sound the same as another Cantonese saying meaning "struck it rich" (though the second syllable, "coi", has a different tone) -- this is found, for example, in the Cantonese saying, ""Gung1 hei2 faat3 coi4"" (恭喜發財, meaning "wishing you prosperity"), which is often proclaimed during Chinese New Year.