Fava bean shoots (Vicia faba), known in Chinese kitchens as dou ban miao (蚕豆苗), are the tender growing tips of the broad-bean plant — the top few centimetres of soft new stem carrying paired oval leaflets of a pale, dusty grey-green. Sweet, faintly nutty and clean with the vegetal character of the young bean, they are a prized seasonal green: flash stir-fried with garlic across eastern and southern China, and gathered as a wild-tasting spring pot-herb around the Mediterranean where the broad bean has grown since antiquity.