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Fruit is one of East Asia's best

By Steve Hubrecht (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-27 09:14

Orange, hamburger-shaped and delicious, persimmons beckon from almost every food stall and shop in Beijing these days.

The persimmon season is at its peak in the capital and there's no better time to appreciate one of East Asia's finest native fruits.

There are three types of persimmons available in Beijing. The hard, light orange ones with the same crisp texture as a pear or an apple. The soft, dark orange ones that are much sweeter and juicier and have the stringy texture of an over-ripe tomato. And, when winter comes, frozen persimmons preserve a taste of fall for those who don't mind eating frosty snacks when the temperatures are bone-chillingly low.

You can find the less-common frozen persimmons, which are somewhat similar in concept to frozen grapes, at most food stores in the capital, but you may need to ask the vendor to show you where he or she has hidden them in the store's freezer.

It is not necessarily easy to explain the appeal of a persimmon to somebody who has never seen one. It's not the most exotic fruit in Beijing - it doesn't have the alluringly weird shape of a dragon fruit or the mind-boggling mass of a jackfruit. It doesn't give off the heavy, fragrant aroma of a ripe mango. It doesn't pack the same succulently sweet flavor as a bunch of lychees.

But there is something about it that's impossible to ignore. Maybe, it's the odd shape of the softer ones. Maybe, it's the initial surprise of biting into something that appears so much like a tomato, but that tastes much sweeter. Maybe, it's the way you can slice the soft ones open and eat them with a spoon, as if they were a pudding.

The capital is full of persimmon trees - popping out from hutong courtyards, standing in parks and the occasional one out along the street - and part of the appeal of the fruit is the way you can watch it grow on trees, ripening from green to light yellow to orange to deep, almost reddish, orange as summer turns to fall and the air gets colder.

Persimmons are good for more than just their flavor too. According to some traditional Chinese beliefs, they can be used along with traditional Chinese medicine to help lower blood pressure, brighten complexions, cure both hangovers and hemorrhoids, and regulate a person's qi (energy).

In some parts of China, they were traditionally given as good-luck gifts to newlyweds because their reddish orange color and round shape were reminiscent of Chinese lanterns.

In some part of North America, which is home to a smaller, less-sweet type of persimmon, folklore holds that the severity of the coming winter can be predicting by cutting open a ripe persimmon and examining what type of cutlery the shape of its seeds most closely resembles.

If the shape of the seed is similar to a knife, the winter ahead will be cutting cold, with bitter winds that slice right through you. If the seed looks more like a spoon then winter is going to have a lot of snow and involve a good deal of shoveling. But if the seed looks more like a fork, winter is going to be light, with relatively mild temperatures and just a sprinkling of snow.

Even if you don't believe in either traditional Chinese medicine or North American folklore, you can still benefit by gulping down some persimmons, since they're loaded with vitamin A, vitamin C and antioxidants.

Get them now, before the season ends.