A Simple high-performance liquid chromatographic method is described for the rapid estimation of ascorbic acid and total ascorbic acid. Use of tetra-n-butylammonium bromide as an ion-pairing reagent in the mobile phase yielded reproducible retention for ascorbic acid. Total ascorbic acid is determined by reducing the dehydroascorbic acid to ascorbic acid by treatment with DL-homocysteine. This high-performance liquid chromatographic method has been applied to the analysis of several Chinese vegetables. These Chinese vegetables contained more total ascorbic acid than any other vegetables on the market.