'Chang Tsing' Cucumber

Cucumis sativus

Origin: China

Improvement status: Landrace

Seeds per packet: ~25

Germination tested 01/2026: 80%

Life cycle: Annual

'Chang Tsing' is a very long cucumber from China. It has a nice, sweet flavor, even when quite large, with a good crunch. The plants will sprawl or climb, but our grower reports that fruit left on the ground for a while become susceptible to rot, so we recommend growing it up a trellis (that will yield longer, straighter cukes too). We have not been able to learn much about the history of this cucumber itself, other than it is a landrace (and it will accordingly demonstrate some degree of diversity), but we can report that it came into the USDA seed collection thanks to a fascinating but now little-known American.

This cucumber was part of a small tranche of seeds donated to the USDA in 1978 by Ho Kang of the Ministry of Forestry and Agriculture of the People's Republic of China, located in Beijing. According to the USDA's plant inventory book from that year, the seeds were "presented" by Ho Kang "through O.L. Freeman, Business International Corporation, New York New York." We haven't been able to learn anything else about Ho Kang, or why — in the early days of the US-China thaw initiated by Richard Nixon a few years earlier — he used an American business consultant to donate 14 Chinese vegetables to the USDA (this cucumber, along with two tomatoes, three common beans, two radishes, a yardlong bean, a cauliflower and a handful of other brassicas), but we were able to learn a lot about O.L. Freeman and even, perhaps, what he was doing in China.

Orville Lathrop Freeman was born in Minneapolis during World War I, to parents of Swedish and German stock. He attended Central High School and then the University of Minnesota, where he was a reserve quarterback on the football team. He also met his lifelong friend and political ally at the U., future US Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He married Jane Charloote Shields, whom he'd also met in college, soon before deploying as an infantry officer in World War II. His service was cut short by a gunshot wound to the face that severly damaged his jaw during the Bougainville Campaign in Papua New Guinea, for which he earned a Purple Heart.

Upon returning home, Freeman finished law school at the U., began practicing law, and quickly established himself as a force in the newly-formed Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (he is said to have helped complete the successful merger between the state's Democratic Party and the Farmer-Labor Party). His friend Humphrey had already risen to become Mayor of Minneapolis, and Freemen served as campaign manager for Humphrey's successful 1948 U.S. Senate campaign. Freeman failed in a bid to become attorney general of the state in 1950, and again in a bid to become governor in 1952, but he was successul on a second try in 1954 — becoming the state's first DFL governor — and he was re-elected in 1956 and 1958. His governorship is perhaps most remembered (to the extent that it is remembered at all) for his decision to declare martial law in the city of Albert Lea in 1959 during a strike at a meat-packing plant — which a federal court twelve days later ruled was inappropriate. He credited the controversy for his gubernatorial loss the following year.

In July of 1960, following his friend Humphrey dropping out of the Democratic presidential primary, Freeman himself rose to nominate then-Senator John F. Kennedy for president at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Later in the campaign, when Kennedy's Catholic faith became a major campaign issue, Freeman — a Lutheran deacon — went on TV to declare that religious bigory had no place in Minnesota politics. Kennedy went on to narrowly carry Minnesota, even as Freeman lost his own bid for re-election. No doubt in gratitude for his loyalty, Kennedy appointed Freeman to serve as his Secretary of Agriculture (at 42, he was the youngest person to ever hold that role, and according to his New York Times obituary, his "only link to the soil was his remembrance of boyhood summers on his grandfather's farm."). But he turned out to be a significant character in the Johnson administration, submitting the legislation that became the Food Stamp Program (which still exists today), as well as school breakfast programs for poor children. He helped expand foreign markets for US farmers, lobbied Congress to strengthen food-safety protections, and pushed to improve rural infrastructure like water and sewer systems through loans and grant programs. He remained in the role until Lyndon Johnson left the Presidency with the inauguration of Richard Nixon in 1969.

But it was actually his post-politics career that brought him to China. First as chief executive of the consulting firm EDP Technology, and then as president of Business International Corporation, a New York-based "publishing and research organization" that made its money consulting for businesses and governments, Freeman leveraged his knowledge and connections to serve his clients around the world. A September 1980 profile in the New York Times noted that he'd already traveled to over 20 countries that year — "I have jogging courses laid out in just about every city in the world and I've managed to get lost on half of them" — and also mentioned that he was in the process of putting together a tour of China for American coal industry executives.

Of his transition of liberal politician to corporate executive, he had this to say: "Oh sure, some businessmen tease me about being a Democrat, but my whole career was committed to the market economy as an allocator of scarce resources. The debate was never over the merits of free enterprise but over how much government planning an involvement." He went on, "I've always believed that economic growth is essential to prevent stagflation and to helping developing countries. I've also always believed in the interdependence of nations, the One World proclaimed by Wendell Willkie. That's why this job is completely in keeping with my philosophy: We ask ourselves constantly, how can our information help an international company make a profit.”

So while we don't know exactly what he was doing in China in 1978 — whether it was to expand the coal industry there or something else — and we don't know anything else about the history of this cucumber, we can say with assurance that it only arrived from the People's Republic to the United States because of an old-school liberal and committed capitalist named Orville.

Strange, but true.

Our seed was grown by our friend Tyler Neitzey of North Carolina, whom EFN co-founder Nate Kleinman got to know because Tyler was a member of the first student cohort of the Ira Wallace Seed School, a project of Ujaama Cooperative Farming Alliance, where Nate is an instructor.

GROWING TIPS: Direct sow after soil warms up in spring (around the same time you would plant green beans or corn), or start indoors a couple weeks before last frost. Provide a trellis.