Taiwan’s divine fruit: Connecting Ramayana with Lord Buddha, drawing China’s wrath

One of the first Chinese words one learns while studying Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan is Shuǐguǒ (水果), the Chinese term for fruits. As a Huayu (華語) or Standard Chinese language enrichment scholar in the geopolitical hotspot, I was no exception. However, after spending a few months in the island nation, I have realised the Taiwanese people’s profound love for a variety of fruits and also experienced the vast range of fruits the tiny island produces annually. Connecting Indian mythology with Sakyamuni However, as part of my Shuǐguǒ vocabulary enhancement, I have encountered startling trivia. In Taiwan, this is the harvest season of the fruit with thick, scaly rind, known worldwide by the names of custard apple or sugar apple or sweetsop. It’s known chiefly across north and western India as Sitaphal, named after the famous demigoddess of Hindu mythology, Ramayana, while in my home state of West Bengal, it’s called Ata, believe it or not, the same as its Portuguese name.   There is another fruit species called Ramphal in India, and its pulpy inside looks and tastes almost similar to custard apple, but it belongs to a different tropical fruit species but from the same genre of Annona and is known as bullock’s heart/ox heart or wild sweetsop in Latin America and the Caribbean regions. But in Taiwan, it’s known as Shìjiā (釋迦).   The name, as explained to me by my Taiwanese teacher, “is the short form Shìjiā móu ní fó (釋迦牟尼佛), the Chinese name of the Sakyamuni avatar of Lord Gautam Buddha. It’s the archetypal and most widely represented hairstyle with tight snail curls and the prominent usnisa or topknot of the historical founder of Buddhism that gave the fleshy fruit its name in Taiwan.”   Incidentally, Buddhism is one of the major religions of Taiwan. Mahayana Buddhism, along with Confucian principles, local practices and Taoist tradition, has been the most predominantly practised religion on the island. Unknown in China with foreign lychee “However, the Taiwanese name of Shìjiā is not so common in Mainland China as this tropical, and sub-tropical fruit is not so widely available across our country. Besides, we know it by the name of Fān lìzhī (番荔枝) as Fān (番) is the Chinese word for foreign and Lìzhī (荔枝) is the Chinese name of the fruit lychee,” informed Huang Qiang, a Chinese businessman from Shanghai after several of my mainland contacts in Beijing and other top-tier cities failed to identify the fruit and tell its name.   Interestingly, the fruit of lychee had a historical origin in China. The historical records in China claim its earliest mention in the middle kingdom in 200 BC, while last year (2022), a report in Nature Genetics stated, on the basis of sequencing the DNA of lychee plants, that the first lychees appeared in the wild in Yunnan province in southwest China tens of thousands of years ago. The Chinese-origin fruit, however, made its journey to the west after being introduced by Jesuit Missionary from Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to China, Michal Boym, in 1656, while the rather foreign fruit of custard apple or sweet sop was brought to Taiwan by the Dutch around the same time. According to the website of the Council of Agriculture of the Executive Yuan of the Taiwanese government, the custard apple, also known as a sugar apple or sweetsop in different parts of the world, “was introduced to Taiwan by Dutch colonialists about 400 years ago.” In a rather remarkable coincidence, the arrival of the erstwhile foreign fruit on Taiwan’s soil was quite contemporary to the origin of Taiwan’s Buddhism that dates back more than 300 years, to the time when Han Chinese began immigrating to the island during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Trade tussle over custard apple The name, Fān lìzhī, is relatively lesser-known across the Taiwan strait, but the seasonal fruit with its sugary, succulent pulp and shiny black seeds inside recently became a bone of contention between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or Mainland China and the Republic of China (ROC) or Taiwan. In 2021, amidst intensifying trade tensions, China imposed a ban on Taiwan’s sugar apples, along with wax apples, in September 2021, citing pest concerns, close on the heels of launching its much-publicised import embargo assault on Taiwanese pineapples. A few months later, in last January (2022), the Taiwanese government announced a ban on the imports of frozen custard apples from China, calling the embargo “non-retaliatory.” Incidentally, the barring and the counter ban over custard apples was overshadowed by publicised protests over pineapples, arguably Taiwan’s most predominant fruit export to the mainland. The fruit war also saw Taiwan’s foreign minister Joseph Wu launching a “Freedom Pineapple” hashtag campaign on Twitter after Beijing went for the jugular on the island’s popular fruit. A hybrid fruit with Buddha’s head In addition, another unique fruit with both pineapple and custard apple in its name faced the wrath of the Chinese import restrictions measures as part of a comprehensive custard apple ban basket. Significantly, Taiwan made a delicious fusion of custard apple and pineapple, to name one of its most popular hybrid fruit atemoya as Fènglí Shìjiā (鳳梨釋迦) or pineapple custard apple. The English name of atemoya is a combination of ate, an old Mexican name for sugar apple, and moya is from cherimoya. Notably, the Chinese word for pineapple is Fènglí (鳳梨). The nutrient-rich atemoya, a hybrid between the Latin American fruit cherimoya and its close relative (botanically from the same Annona fruits family) custard apple, was first introduced to fruit-frenzy Taiwan from Israel in 1968 and has become the apple of the island nation’s eye over the last few decades. Meanwhile, with its government’s wholehearted efforts to have a bite of the cherry with atemoya exports, the cross-breed fruit overtook pineapples and mangoes as Taiwan’s leading fruit export since 2008. Apple of Taiwan’s fruit exporters’ eyes The Taiwanese government has been aggressively and meticulously working for the global positioning of their distinctive atemoyas, known for their high content of protein, carbohydrates, vitamin C, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, etc., as the country’s signature fruit like New Zealand’s kiwifruit. Moreover, Taiwanese researchers have been using their cutting-edge agricultural research and innovative technologies, adding a few other conducive fruit species to improve the quality of this hybrid fruit known for its wide climate adaptability. In fact, a few years before China went bananas by blocking its import on their soil in 2021, atemoya became a tariff-free export product to China and gained substantial ground in the Chinese imported fruits market, especially in the northeastern regions. Meanwhile, with its stringent fruit and seed import curbs in India, the Taiwanese hybrid fruit is yet to make a mark even though some online sites are selling atemoya seeds, saplings or fruits by another key Ramayana protagonist. In India, this relatively inconspicuous and almost unknown species of atemoya is being called, no prize for guessing, Laxman phal. The author is an independent journalist and MOE Huayu Scholar in Kaohsiung. 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