These are the things that I am going to use today: celery, cabbage, long bean, Chinese turnip radish, carrot, ginger, 3 kinds of chilies. You can use whatever vegetables you like but I personally will avoid using leafy greens that will turn soggy after pickling such as lettuce, spinach, and baby bok choy.
Wash, rub, and rinse all the vegetables under running water. Discard the parts that you don’t normally eat such as the tough end of the celery, the top of the carrot and the chili stem. Cut the vegetables into the size you like. Simply place them on a clean tray. Let it sundry 5 hours or air dry overnight, until there is no water on the surface.
Next day, all the veggies are completely dried. The surface gets a little crinkle, also shrank a little bit. Check the cabbage, there is not water under knees and the leaves are soft. That is exactly what you want.
Now you can start putting the vegetables into the jars. The cabbage goes in first because that is the biggest size. Then you use the smaller vegetables to fill up the empty space. You know, kind of like a puzzle. You want to maximize the use of the jar. One thing about chilies and peppers is that they do make the brine become spicy as the day goes by so you want to be careful when using it.
Now the brine has been sitting overnight. You just go fish out all the spices. Pour it into the jar. Be sure to fill it all the way up close to the lid. That is the way how you keep the least amount of air inside. If there is too much air pack between the lid and the liquid, there is a higher chance it will get spoiled. Finish it with 2 tbsp of high alcohol content liquored. At least 30%. The higher, the better. My jar is 3.5 liter, if it is a small jar, you will need to use less alcohol.
Ok, that is basically all the work for making Chinese pickles. Now you just put them in a dark place. Let them ferment for 20 days. In the first week, every 2 days you need to open the lid and let it air out for a few seconds. What happens is that during the fermentation, the bacteria creates lots of air which needs to be released. If you don't do that. They will inflate like an over shook cola. You do not want a mess like that. Well, it is not the end of the world. You just need to add a little more brine and fill it up again. Once you pass the first week or 2, depends on what type of veggies you are pickling, you don’t need to let it air out anymore unless you are adding new vegetables to the brine.