Chives are a small plant used in cooking. The part we eat is the long, thin green leaves: round like little tubes, hollow inside, with a mild onion taste — onion-y, but soft, not sharp. The plant also has purple flowers, and some people eat those too. Cooks snip the leaves over eggs, potatoes, soup, or sour cream at the last moment, because long cooking steals the fresh taste. You almost always meet the word in the plural, like scissors: people say chives, not a chive, and in a shop you buy a bunch of chives. Though actually, this is where Taiwanese cooks get caught. The flat, garlic-y green that goes into dumplings and 韭菜盒子 is a different plant. English calls that Chinese chives or garlic chives. Ordinary 青蔥 is another plant again. When a Western recipe says chives, it means the thin round herb, not 韭菜 and not spring onion.