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From an online "weight-loss hack" to protective manicures: The humble bean that connects harvest, community and home in Shandong_我的网站

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A farmer harvests green beans at a vegetable production base in Yantai, East China's Shandong Province, on August 21, 2024. Photo: VCGA 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.
。 “超级地球”是一类不同于我们太阳系中任何行星的行星。它们的质量比地球大，但不超过其质量的10倍。这意味着它们的质量比地球大，但又比海王星和天王星这样的冰冷气态巨行星轻。它们可以由气体、岩石或两者的组合组成。关键事实天文学家通常通过观察行星在经过其宿主恒星前时阻挡了多少光线来发现和研究系外行星，这种技术被称为“凌日法”。GJ 1252 b是一颗距离地球约65光年的系外行星，其半径是地球的1.18倍，于2020年被美国宇航局的凌日系外行星调查卫星（TESS）用这种方法发现。这项新研究中的天文学家在斯皮策太空望远镜退役前对这颗系外行星进行了观测，并能够近距离观察这颗行星和它的大气。利用斯皮策望远镜，研究小组检测到了次蚀。这发生在一颗行星经过一颗恒星后面时，行星的光线被阻挡。行星的光线来自于其自身的红外辐射（或热量），以及从恒星反射的光线。寻找宇宙中生命迹象的天文学家们关注系外行星的一些不同细节。这些细节中有许多是系外行星和地球之间的比较，因为地球仍然是我们已经确认存在生命的唯一行星。GJ 1252 b并不比地球大多少。

B | 然而，它的温度要高得多，因为它离它的恒星更近。此外，正如天文学家在这项研究中发现的那样，它缺乏很多大气层。天文学家和研究报告的共同作者、马克斯-普朗克天文研究所系外行星大气物理学部主任Laura Kreidberg说：“我们刚刚开始了解岩质行星能够保持其大气层的频率，以及在什么情况下。这一测量结果表明，对于最热的行星，厚厚的大气层通常不太可能存在。

C | ”为了确定这颗系外行星的大气层（如果有的话）可能是什么样的，天文学家测量了GJ 1252 b的红外辐射，因为它的光线在一次次的日食中被遮挡。这些观测结果揭示了这颗行星炙热的白天温度，估计高达2242华氏度（1228摄氏度）。事实上，GJ 1252 b是如此之热，以至于金、银和铜都会在这颗行星上融化。这个系外行星的预期温度，与大气模型相比，表明它的表面压力可能低于10bar （作为参考，地球的表面压力约为1bar ）。虽然这颗行星的炙热温度将使大气层难以长期稳定，但这颗系外行星可能有一个密度像地球的大气层，一个密度比地球高10倍的大气层，甚至没有任何大气层。鉴于其极端的温度和低的表面压力，这个团队的天文学家们预测，GJ 1252 b可能根本没有大气层。这是目前科学家对其大气层有如此清晰认识的最小的系外行星。GJ 1252b是一颗系外行星，它首先被TESS探测到，然后在2020年望远镜任务结束之前，用斯皮策望远镜进行了更彻底的调查。随着使用詹姆斯-韦伯太空望远镜（JWST）的进一步探索，研究人员可以对这颗行星的大气层进行更严格的限制，这是一种令人兴奋的可能性。“当时，斯皮策是已知宇宙中唯一能够进行此类测量的设施。现在，斯皮策已被关闭，但JWST就在那里，在这些波长下，它比斯皮策要敏感得多。

D | 因此，我们用斯皮策做的困难的事情，现在我们可以开始用JWST轻松地完成，而且是对更多数量的岩质行星，”Crossfield说。“JWST的红外观测有可能揭示出像这样的热的岩石行星的表面特性。不同类型的岩石有不同的光谱特征，所以我们有可能了解到GJ 1252b是由什么类型的岩石构成的，”Kreidberg补充说。用JWST进一步研究GJ 1252 b对科学家来说是一种令人兴奋的可能性，因为确认这样一颗小而热的系外行星上有大气层是非常有趣的，因为探索像这样一颗完全没有大气层的行星的组成也是非常迷人的。