A treasure chest of tropical fruit
In recent years the star apple (Chrysophyllum cainito), which like the abiu is a member of the Sapotaceae family, has also been attracting increasing attention. It is so named because the seeds are arranged in a star pattern, as seen when the fruit is cut open crosswise. The juice is white in color, and in Vietnam the fruit is called vú sữa, meaning “milky breast.” With growing numbers of Vietnamese immigrants living in Taiwan, the star apple has also come to be known as “milk fruit” (niunai guo) in Chinese.
One way to eat a star apple is to cut it in half and scoop out the flesh with a spoon; or you can try eating it the Vietnamese way: roll the fruit between your hands, then make a small hole and suck out the flesh. As it slides into your mouth, you will be able to directly appreciate why it has the name of “milk fruit.”
In fact, the star apple was introduced into Taiwan way back in 1924. Other tropical fruits such as the canistel (Pouteria campechiana), the durian and the sapodilla (Manilkara zapota) were also introduced during the Japanese colonial era. Writer and illustrator Wang Jui-min, who has devoted himself to the study of tropical plants since his university days, says that Japan made Taiwan an important base for research into tropical plants because of the climate here.
Wang relates that the tropical fruits that were introduced at that time have continued to be grown here and there in Central and Southern Taiwan. As a child he saw several kinds of such fruit for sale at flower markets in Taichung, but always in small numbers. However, in the 1990s, Southeast Asians who came to Taiwan as migrant workers or as long-term immigrants discovered that Taiwan had fruits from their native countries, and started to buy them, which encouraged more local farmers to begin growing these fruits.
As Southeast-Asian immigrants stayed longer in Taiwan, some of them began growing fruits and vegetables from their homelands on farmland owned by their Taiwanese families. Pham Thi Thu, a Vietnamese woman living in Pingtung County, is one example.
Pham says with a smile, “When I lived in Vietnam I worked as a seamstress and as a teacher, but I never grew anything.” But after marrying into a Taiwanese family, she noticed that fellow Vietnamese women living nearby missed the fruits of their homeland, giving her the idea to try her hand at growing some. She has experienced typhoons that virtually wiped out her saplings, but the optimistic Pham has always put a smile on her face and tried again, and through more than a decade of experimentation has gradually increased the scale of her operation. On the day of our visit, Pham’s orchard contains a variety of tropical fruits, including star apples, rambutan, durian, and jackfruit, making us feel as if we are in a Southeast-Asian country. Pham says that whenever her Vietnamese friends visit they are very happy, because being surrounded by these familiar fruits gives them a feeling of returning home.