by Daisy Wakefield
photograph by Irma Smit te-Rietstap

June 2009

Summertime is synonymous with fresh fruit – juicy, sweet, just a little tart and somehow perfectly cooling on a humid day.

While you’re filling your fruit basket with sun-ripened classics like peaches and watermelons, toss in some of those varieties you don’t recognize, too. Chinese fruits are varied, versatile, and seriously yummy.

Most of these fruits are in season from May to August. They can be found at Carrefour or fruit shops. These fruits are safe to eat from street vendors as well. Berries should be washed thoroughly with water and fruit and vegetable wash, available at groceries in the dish detergent section.

Lychee (Litchi)
Li Zhi (荔枝)
Lychees are covered with a rust-colored knotty rind that peels away easily to a pearl white fruit. Succulent and sweet, lychees do need to be eaten quickly as they over ripen within days. (Note: Be aware, a seed at the center of the lychee adheres a bit to the fruit’s flesh and can be a choking hazard.)

Trivia: Emperor Li Longji’s most-loved concubine apparently had a hankering for the lychee fruit. The Emperor had it imported from the south of China by imperial messenger horse riders taking day and night shifts to get the fruit to the concubine before it over ripened.

Mulberry
Sang Zhen (桑椹)
These purplish-black berries are thin, curvy, and usually carry a thin green stem. Their sweet and sour quality makes them an excellent choice for jams, muffins or fruit tarts.

Trivia: The dark pigment of mulberries are extracted and used as natural food colorants.

Loquat
Pi Pa (枇杷)
This small pear-shaped fruit is yellow and tender with a muted sweetness and peach like texture.  To eat a loquat, peel away the skin and then cut it open to remove the seeds. Loquats are indigenous to China but are now most widely cultivated in Japan.

Trivia: Pi pa gao (loquat paste) is the most commonly used cough syrup and expectorant in China for adults and children. It’s made from a number of fruit- and plant-based syrups, most notably loquat syrup. While it does seem to work well, given pi pa gao’s black, tar-like consistency and medicine-like flavor… good luck getting it down anyone’s throat.

Bayberry
Yang Mei (杨梅)
Bayberry is a fruit to lookout for. Although it usually arrives in June, its season is short and imprecise. Bayberries are usually at their peak of flavor – a delicious blend of juiciness, sweetness and tartness – for a single week.

Trivia: In neighboring Zhejiang province, the city of Yuyao is the harvesting capital of bayberries. Each June, families from Shanghai will travel here to pick their own berries.

Kiwi
Mi Hou Tao (猕猴桃)
The kiwi’s fuzzy brown skin slices open to reveal bright green flesh with edible black seeds. Scoop the flesh out with a spoon or peel the skin away and slice it. The kiwi is acidic and high in vitamin C, potassium, and omega-3s.

Trivia: Kiwis were actually indigenous to China long before they were introduced to New Zealand. In fact, New Zealanders called it the “Chinese gooseberry” because of its origins. The largest producer of the kiwi today is Italy.