The Coolest Taste of Summer--Taiwan's Jelly Fig

"A maiden wields a jade staff/ Pearl trees fill jade woods/ A scoop of mountain water/ Refreshes a pure heart." Art experts divide the career of painter-poet Pu Hsin-yu (1896-1963) into two periods-his northern mainland period, and his southern period. But one can tell at a glance that his calligraphic poem "The Love-Jade Seed" was composed after this Manchu prince settled in Taiwan, because anyone who has not visited Taiwan is hardly likely to have even heard of fig jelly, let alone to have tasted it himself!

Pu Hsin-yu wrote this footnote to the poem: "Love-jade [jelly fig] grows in the mountains of Chiayi. A girl named Ai-yu ['Love-jade'] was washing clothes in a stream. She saw that the surface of the water had the appearance of jelly. She cupped her hands to drink, and found it as cooling as ice. It was the seeds of a tree. She gathered the seeds and sold the jelly, to support her parents. They came to be called 'Love-jade seeds.'" This combination of amber-like fig jelly with a tale of a filial daughter is very appealing.

However, according to the chapter on agriculture in Lien Heng's General History of Taiwan, the first person to discover how jelly-fig seeds turned water to jelly, and to "commercialize" them, was actually Ai-yu's father. This fellow, whose ancestral home was Tong'an in Fujian, regularly traveled about Chiayi County trading in local produce. In 1821, by a stream near Tapu, he happened to notice how jelly-fig seeds had formed a natural jelly. "Looking closely, he saw that the water was dotted with seeds fallen from the trees. Squeezing them and finding them to be pulpy, he gathered them up, and took them home. There he washed them with water, and they quickly turned to jelly which, when mixed with sugar, was of excellent flavor." His lovely daughter Ai-yu had nothing to do all day, so he set her to work making and selling the jelly. As a result, the history concludes, "word spread far and wide, more and more people began collecting the seeds, and they were sold into Fujian and Guangdong."

As a valuable and unique Taiwanese product, over a century ago the jelly fig was already bringing in a lot of money for commercially astute Taiwanese. As for scientific research, however, it was not until 1904, when Taiwan was under Japanese rule, that botanists studied the morphology of the jelly-fig plant, classified the plant taxonomically, and gave it its scientific name, Ficus awkeotsang. And it was only in the 1960s that Professor Huang Yung-chuan of the horticulture department at National Taiwan University (NTU) finally unraveled the "mechanism" by which jelly-fig seeds produce jelly.

Male and female plants

The jelly fig is an evergreen climbing plant that uses its aerial roots to climb up tree trunks or rocks. It is distributed throughout the forests that cover large areas of Taiwan's Central Mountain Range. In the past, from lower elevations up to medium elevations around 1500 meters, one could see it growing rampantly everywhere. For the jelly-fig plant to be able to flower and set fruit, it needs to climb right up into the crown of its host tree, so that its leaves can get ample sunshine. In a good year, a wild jelly-fig plant growing on a large tree can produce 3000 jelly figs.

Every spring, jelly-fig plants produce huge numbers of flowers. Yet these flowers go quite unnoticed, for the whole of the plants' reproductive process, from flowering to pollination to fruiting, takes place hidden inside the hollow, fleshy fruiting bodies that develop into figs.

Jelly-fig plants are divided into male and female plants. Each fruiting body on a female plant produces 10-20,000 female flowers. The fruiting bodies begin to grow in March each year, and by May they are each as big as a fist. Come mid-June, all the little flowers hidden inside them have been quietly pollinated and have set seeds. But if the flowers are hidden inside tough-skinned fruiting bodies, how on earth do they get pollinated?

In fact, as each fruiting body grows, a hole just a millimeter wide naturally opens up in its bottom end, to await the arrival of a certain species of fig wasp, named Blastophaga pumilae. After the tiny wasp has squeezed its way in, it clambers about everywhere, and this starts the pollination process. After one wasp has visited, it alerts its comrades. More and more wasps arrive, bringing more and more pollen from male jelly-fig plants, and this allows the female figs to grow fat with seeds.

By the creator's ingenious design, the jelly-fig plant returns the favor by helping the fig wasp to carry on its own family line. The fruiting bodies of the male jelly-fig plant contain both male (pollen-bearing) and female flowers. But the female flowers on a male plant have shorter "styles" than do the flowers on a female plant, and this allows the female wasps' ovipositors to reach into the flowers and lay their eggs in them. These flowers develop into "gall flowers," in which the wasp eggs hatch into larvae and pupate into adults. If you split open the fruiting body of a male plant you will usually find that it is full of wriggling little wasps. The male jelly figs contain no seed, and so cannot be used to make fig jelly. But without them, the plants could not fruit and reproduce.

The jelly-fig plant and the fig wasp live in a symbiotic relationship. "This kind of co-evolution, with a single, highly specific partner, is a feature common to all plants in the genus Ficus," explains Professor Lin Tsan-piao of NTU's botany department. The many Ficus species-the figs-are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical regions. They include the well known edible figs, and also the Chinese banyan, which is a common tree in Taiwan. Both are close relatives of the jelly fig, but unlike the jelly fig, which has separate male and female plants, the Chinese banyan bears both male and female flowers on the same plant. Thus, among the numerous tiny fruits on a single Chinese banyan tree, one will find many containing fig wasps.

A natural health food

Thanks to the combined efforts of wasp and fig, each of the pollinated flowers inside a fruiting body on a female jelly-fig plant produces a tiny, seed-containing fruit known as an "achene." Washing and kneading these achenes in water produces an amber-colored jelly. The secret of the gel-forming ability of jelly-fig achenes lies in the presence of the enzyme pectinesterase (PE) in the "pericarp" (skin) of the achene. "Active pectic substances are generally present in fruits and vegetables, but in jelly figs their concentration is especially high," says Lin Tsan-piao, who notes that of the soluble protein that can be extracted from the pericarp of jelly-fig achenes, over 40% is PE, which is one of the highest concentrations found in any fruit or vegetable.

The discovery of the high level of PE in the jelly fig excited researchers. Pectins are used in food processing to make such things as sweets, salad dressing or ice cream, and can also be used to make medicinal products such as antidiarrheal preparations, blood coagulants, and blood plasma substitutes. Hence pectin substances have long been an important research topic for scientists in the field of horticultural produce processing.

In 1967, Professor Huang Yung-chuan of NTU first established that the presence of pectinesterase is the main reason why jelly figs form jelly. He also discovered that jelly-fig PE is unusually stable and pure. Other pectins have to be specially refined, and will only gel if boiled. But jelly fig PE remains active even at room temperature, and the enzyme's catalytic action creates the most natural fruit jelly.

But because the enzyme is so active, during the apparently simple process of kneading and washing, many complex biochemical reactions quietly take place. As many housewives know, the container used to make the jelly must be completely clean of oil or grease, and one cannot add hot water or deionized water; also, one must take care not to use too much force when kneading the achenes, so as not to crush the seeds inside them.

Jelly-fig pectin is a reactive substance, and oil will break down its gelatinized molecules; the part of the jelly fig with the highest concentration of pectin is the pericarp of the achene, but if the seed inside the achene is crushed, substances are released that inhibit the gelling process; and for the jelly to set, the help of calcium ions in the water is also required. . . . With so many factors influencing the gelling process, if you don't master the critical points you won't make a firm fig jelly, but instead you will just end up with a panful of jelly-fig water. But if your fig jelly does succeed, be sure to eat it quickly, or in two or three days it will turn back into water.

For scientists, the formation of fig jelly is an amazing process, and it is also a highly representative example of the chemical processes of life. Its practical significance for the plant, explains Lin Tsan-piao, is that "when the fruiting bodies ripen and split open, and the seeds fall to the ground, the achenes absorb water out of the air and form a gel. This gel retains water, creating the best environment for the seeds and so increasing their chances of germinating."

Ore heaps

Jelly figs produce large numbers of seeds. These are quick to germinate, and, given the opportunity, will grow all the way to the top of a tall tree, with all the vitality typical of a climbing plant. In the wild, one sees them coiling all over large broadleaved trees, with stems up to ten centimeters thick.

According to statistics from the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute (TFRI), during the 1980s the quantity of jelly figs collected from natural forests in Taiwan reached as much as 120,000 kilograms a year. At that time, jelly figs were readily available, and in Taipei's Tihua Street, where all kinds of dried foodstuffs are sold, baskets and sacks of the figs were stacked up into huge mounds that the poet Hsi Mu-jung described as majestic "ore heaps."

But development in the plains and logging in the mountains have reduced the wild population of jelly fig plants, and today most of the remaining ones are in state-owned forests. It has been the long-standing practice of the TFB to sell by tender the right to harvest jelly figs, to businesses which then employ aboriginal workers to harvest them. Jelly figs do not keep well, and transport is difficult in the mountains, so the fig harvesters set out at dawn and come back to the work huts in the afternoon carrying 60 to 70 kilos of jelly figs on their backs. They then immediately cut the figs open and lay them out to dry. The work is extremely arduous. But in recent years the creation of many national parks and nature reserves, where jelly fig harvesting is forbidden, has led to numerous disputes over jelly figs.

From 1987, as part of a program of the provincial aboriginal affairs department to encourage aborigines to grow jelly figs themselves, the TFRI began selecting fast-growing, pectin-rich varieties from various locations, and propagating seedlings which were distributed to aborigines in mountain areas. Increasing numbers of aborigines began cultivating jelly figs. In the wild, the plants grow up large trees, but for the cultivated plants the farmers erect concrete pillars for them to climb. Unobstructed by the shade of the forest trees, the plants receive ample sunshine, so they fruit earlier and more copiously than their wild cousins.

Refreshing jelly

Cultivated jelly figs have replaced wild jelly figs on the market, but as chain stores do battle for the cold drinks market, and the number of cold drink and snack products burgeons, fig jelly, which requires manual labor to knead and wash the fig achenes, has been gradually disappearing from cold drinks menus.

Before the circle of food stalls on the traffic island at the junction of Taipei's Chungking North Road and Nanking West Road was demolished, "people used to line up to eat our fig-seed jelly." So says Chen Mei-yun, whose stall near the circle was famous for its jelly, and is now the only one remaining in the area. Chen says the stall used to keep her whole family busy. Today business has plummeted, but she feels she cannot give up making fig jelly. Kneading the jelly figs by hand takes a lot of work, so nowadays most vendors use agar instead. But jelly made with agar does not have the same firm consistency, so choosy old customers will still make a special trip to Chen's stall to eat her iced fig jelly. Compared with her other wares, such as iced tea, iced sour-plum juice or iced carambola juice, "fig jelly takes the most work and brings in the least profit, and it doesn't keep, so if there's any left over, by the next day it doesn't have the same bite to it." Although Chen Mei-yun complains that fig jelly is the least profitable of her products, she is proud of its quality and reputation.

As fig jelly becomes a rarity in Taiwan, where have all the jelly figs gone? Believe it or not, in Tokyo, Japan there is a cafe called Ogiyochi ("Jelly Fig"), which apparently has recently become a magnet for Japanese women on account of the healthful fig jelly which is its most popular product. The fact is that exports of jelly figs from Taiwan have never ceased, and today jelly figs seem to have become a focus of Japanese enthusiasm for things Taiwanese.

Thick jelly-fig juice slowly oozing out between mother's kneading fingers, amid the shrill buzz of cicadas, under the hot noonday sun. . . . Will Taiwan's jelly figs become nothing more than a fond summer memory?

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A jelly fig's fruiting body contains tens of thousands of tiny flowers.

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The jelly fig is a climbing plant that uses its aerial roots to climb up broadleaved trees. Its fruits mostly grow in the crown of the host tree, so to pick the figs one must climb the tree. (photo by Shen Ching-chen)

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Jelly fig plants are either male or female. The fruits of the male tree provide a place for fig wasp eggs to hatch and mature. When the fruits ripen they split open, releasing the wasps, which squeeze their way into the fruiting bodies of the female plant and pollinate the flowers within them, thus allowing them to produce countless jelly-fig seeds. (photo by Shen Ching-chen)

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The jelly fig is a tough plant. When trained up concrete posts erected by farmers, it grows green and lush.

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Jelly figs are cut open and dried to harvest their numerous little achenes. Kneading these in water produces a refreshing jelly.

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Cold drinks stalls selling iced fig jelly are now a rare sight. This stall just off Taipei's Chungking North Road is the last survivor of the many that until recently graced the nearby traffic circle. The owner is one of the few remaining vendors of hand-made fig jelly.