Yet another method of preparing greens is to quickly blanch them and then plunge them in cold water to stop the cooking process and ensure that the greens retain their crunchiness. These blanched greens can then be added as the last ingredient in stir-fried meat or Seafood.

Different Chinese vegetables are cooked differently. Salad greens (sang choy), for instance, are best eaten raw; they're used to wrap a cooked dish of shredded yam bean with cuttlefish. Spinach is popularly served as a stir-fried dish, in a soup or even deep-fried to be used as a garnish.

For soups, the favourite vegetables are yellow cucumber, kau kei choy (boxthorn leaves) or ham choy (salted mustard greens).

In recent years, Hong Kong greens have proven to be popular. They are juicier, crunchier and less fibrous; some are miniature versions. Hong Kong pak choy (resembling mini siew pak choy but with darker leaves) is also called lai pak, probably because of its milky white stems. Shaped like a spoon and no larger than one, it is also known as chee kang (spoon) pak.

Yellow chives (kow wong), imported from Beijing, are more fragrant and fleshier than the local variety. In fact, according to Lee Yih Shyan, executive Chinese chef of Man Ho Restaurant at JW Marriott Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, imported brinjal from Hong Kong and angled loofah, winter melon and pea shoots (tau mew) from Taiwan are more succulent and tastier than local varieties.