Fruit hunter Yang Xiaoyang has sampled 1,000 weird and wonderful species in his journeys across China and Southeast Asia
While an average person may taste no more than 50 varieties of fruit in a lifetime, 33-year-old Yang Xiaoyang has sampled over 1,000 rare fruit species in just over a decade.
Since 2009, Yang has ventured to hundreds of rainforests searching for exotic fruits, ranging from the colorful finger lime that tastes like caviar, to the Javanese Keppel apple that leaves the eater's body smelling of violets. “People call me a ‘fruit hunter,’ but I’m just having fun,” Yang tells TWOC over the phone from Guangzhou.
Yang is not a scientist, but a self-taught plant “encyclopedia”. Over the past decade, he has seen over 30,000 plant species, one-tenth of the world's total. He especially enjoys tasting new fruits and sharing his discoveries with over four million combined followers on Weibo, where he is a popular science blogger, and on Baidu’s Baijiahao platform, where he publishes videos that have attracted up to one million views.
Each video usually focuses on one exotic fruit. Yang tells his audience how to pick, store, and enjoy it, and shares anecdotes from his fruit-hunting adventures. He ends each video by cutting open and tasting the fruit.
Wang Lin is a contributing writer at The World of Chinese who aspires to tell fresh stories about life, arts and culture in China—no prejudice, no clichés. Her writing has appeared on Nikkei Asia, the South China Morning Post, RADII, and elsewhere. She was born in Ningbo, a bustling port known for its dumplings and seafood.
