Every year from June to September is Yang Xiaoyang's busiest time. The fruits of the Southeast Asian rainforest have entered the fruit stage, and he must seize the time to find those fruits that have the potential to enter the fruit plate of the citizens, or are about to disappear.
Since 2013, when he aspired to be a "fruit hunter", he has traveled almost all over the important rainforests of Singapore, Malaysia and other places, and found a variety of fruits: fragrant jackfruit like a bean ball, wild snake skin fruit like a pangolin, shampoo fruit that is said to make people fart with a violet flavor, fairy fruit that can turn sour taste into sweetness, winged fruit arrowroot with a sweetness of three thousand times as sweet as sucrose...
▲Yang Xiaoyang Courtesy of the interviewee
Tasting rare fruits is beautiful, but the process of finding it before is difficult. In the depths of the rainforest, Yang Xiaoyang has encountered crocodiles, pythons, clouded leopards, bears, and is also seriously allergic because of eating fruit by mistake. Recently, he sorted out more than 500 fruits he found, accompanied by photos and fruit hunting experiences in a book.
He hopes the book will break down the invisible walls of ice between humans and plants, preserving these wonderful fruits and genes.
Wang Wencai, a famous botanist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote in the preface to the book: This work can enable the Chinese people to understand the fruits of China's southeast tropical neighbors, and at the same time learn a lot of knowledge.
Life revolves around the fruit
On the banks of the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, Malaysia, where mangroves are dense, Yang Xiaoyang and a local guide drive small boats through them. Following the footage of the documentary "Fruit Biography", he goes to find a strange-looking water coconut.
Eventually, under the guidance of local residents, they floated from the water coconut germ downstream of a river channel, went upstream, and found a large area of water coconut forest. Because it grows on the periphery of the mangrove forest at the mouth of the sea, it fights against the ferocious sea all year round, and the water coconut forges a hard shell like armor.
▲Water coconut grove Photo courtesy of the interviewee
The "hard shell and soft heart" of the water coconut made Yang Xiaoyang incredible, "Split the water coconut, you find that the fruit is like a natural jelly pudding, very soft." "Every time he eats a novel fruit, Yang Xiaoyang is particularly excited," that kind of surprise and excitement is difficult to describe in words. ”
▲ Water coconut Courtesy of the interviewee
The tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia are hot and rainy all year round, and the plant species are abundant. Yang Xiaoyang is a regular visitor to this rainforest and travels back and forth many times a year. He wants to systematically sort out Southeast Asian fruits and share the surprises he tastes on the tip of his tongue, hoping that these fruits will enter people's fruit plates in the future.
After becoming a fruit hunter, Yang Xiaoyang's life basically revolves around fruits. Each fruit grows in a different environment and ripening time, and he has developed a habit of setting off as soon as a local friend sends him information about the fruit. Running in vain is a common occurrence. The local weather was changeable, coupled with inaccurate information, he often rushed to the local area, and the fruit was gone.
In addition to the hardships of the road, there are also many dangers in the fruit hunting journey. Deep in the rainforest, Yang Xiaoyang has encountered crocodiles, pythons, clouded leopards, and bears. But he thinks the most terrifying thing is not animals, but encountering people in the wild. "The guy was carrying a shotgun, and he didn't know what you were going to do." Yang Xiaoyang said that every time he arrived near the ethnic minority tribes, he was extremely careful, for fear of being caught as an intruder.
"Bad way" and severe allergies
In Yang Xiaoyang's impression, the process of finding Chambord fruit is the most memorable, which can be called "囧途". Chambord fruit is one of the most important fruits on his hunting list, and legend has it that when he ate it, he was full of incense, and even sweating, urinating, and farting had a faint violet fragrance. Yang Xiaoyang was curious and went to Java Island for this purpose.
Depart from Singapore to the airport in Jakarta, Indonesia, and then transfer to a train and then a car to reach the nearby city of your destination. On the way, he was first cheated by the black car driver, and then the credit card was frozen because of the remote cash withdrawal, wanted to stay in the hotel and found that the other party did not accept the foreign currency, and finally could only live for a day and two nights with very little cash (about 70 yuan).
▲Chambord Fruit Courtesy of the interviewee
Every time no matter how much you toss and turn along, you will be diluted the moment you taste the fruit. Yang Xiaoyang said that the aroma of chambord fruit is charming, the fruit aroma is like mango, and it is a bit like pineapple, and the whole person feels light and fluttery after eating. In order to verify the "legend" of chambord fruit, he paid special attention to the smell of his sweat and urinated regularly, but eventually found that there was no fragrance.
Tasting rare fruits can bring surprises, and can also bring "disaster". Yang Xiaoyang suffered a severe allergy as a result. In 2015, he followed the world cherimoya group to the wild to find melon fu wood, after finding the experts began to taste the melon fu wood, Yang Xiaoyang saw the situation, also ate one. Within 10 minutes, he had an adverse reaction, unable to speak, and his throat felt as if it had been pricked.
▲Guafu wood Courtesy of the interviewee
With everyone's help, Yang Xiaoyang frantically poured water and gargled his mouth, and was finally rescued. Later, he learned that only some people with physical fitness were sensitive to Guafumu, and no one around him had this situation. This incident gave Yang Xiaoyang a lot of warnings, he did not dare to eat the strange fruits he found at will.
Yang Xiaoyang introduced that many fruits have two faces, Jamaica's salted fish fruit, it is highly toxic before the fruit ripe and cracks, eating one can poison people, but after the fruit is ripe and cracked, its flesh is very sweet, Jamaica will take this fruit with salted fish to cook together.
Childhood dream and plant master
Yang Xiaoyang was born in 1988 in Anyang, Henan. Growing up in the countryside, he has a special affection for plants. When I was a child, when I was herding sheep on the hillside, he often observed the growth of wildflowers and wild grasses, "just watching it silently, I felt that I was communicating with them." ”
Yang Xiaoyang often digs up various wild grasses and wildflowers to be planted at home, and even calls on boys of similar age in the village to compete in planting wildflowers. During that time, the family's yard and stairs were planted with wildflowers. Parents can't understand how the weeds that roam the mountains can attract their sons so much.
Yang Xiaoyang said that when he was a child in the northern countryside, the fruit varieties were single, and whoever ate the southern fruit once, he was particularly envious. He loves to eat a banana, and he once had a dream: one day he could eat bananas until he was full.
After the college entrance examination, he gave up studying in the chemistry department of Zhengzhou University and passed the independent admissions test to go to a university in Singapore. Originally studying precision manufacturing engineering, he had no connection with plants. However, after a long period of contact with plants during his studies, he basically became "half a plant master".
He traveled through Singapore's nature reserves, recording the novelty of plants he saw with a single lens reflex. He said that after a rough collation, he took 300,000 photos of plants in those years, and more than 8,000 species could be preliminarily identified.
After a period of accumulation, he began to go to the Singapore Botanical Garden and the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to seek teaching, and learned plant taxonomy knowledge more systematically. At the same time, he created the "Plant Masters" team on the Internet, as well as the "Booky Plant Taxonomy", to share the wonderful plants he saw with more people, which caused strong repercussions among plant taxonomy enthusiasts and scholars.
Invested in plant introduction and conservation business
In 2013, Singapore experienced the worst smog disaster in history due to the illegal "burning of babies" in neighboring countries. This incident has affected the lives of many residents and also affected Yang Xiaoyang's views on environmental protection. Yang Xiaoyang said that Indonesia has the world's second largest tropical rainforest and has many unexplored plant resources. "Those mountains that have been burned down may have special species. Not only burned a mountain, but also burned a lot of future possibilities. ”
After the smog disaster, Yang Xiaoyang quit his stable job at a precision manufacturing company in Singapore and joined the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, determined to devote himself to the cause of plant introduction and conservation. During this time, a friend gave him a book called "Fruit Hunter", which opened his understanding of fruit.
Yang Xiaoyang became interested in the profession of fruit hunter. Later, the editor of the China Agricultural Publishing House found him and wanted to ask the plant masters of the "Bookish Plant Taxonomy" to write a series of original plant science books, and Yang Xiaoyang took this as an opportunity to start a fruit hunter's journey.
After several years of searching, Yang Xiaoyang sorted out more than 500 kinds of fruits he found, selected 37 kinds of fruits, and produced a book "Southeast Asian Fruit Hunters" with photos and his search experience. The book takes his cognitive process of "hunting" fruits as the main line, showing the unknown parts of these fruits, and at the beginning of each summary, Yang Xiaoyang deliberately sets up a small file to introduce its scientific name, family genus, Chinese name, main characteristics, origin and other information.
He hopes that the book will break down the invisible ice wall between people and plants, and preserve these wonderful fruits and genes.
Popular science workers who love to toss
The second episode of the documentary "Fruit Biography" tells the story of two fruit hunters: Yang Xiaoyang, who is looking for water coconuts, and Ke Youqing, who is looking for African arrowroot fruits.
▲ Screenshot of the documentary "Fruit Legend"
"Fruit Biography" is a fruit-themed humanistic and natural documentary jointly produced by Yunji Future Media Co., Ltd. and Anhui Satellite TV. In the view of the general director Su Lei, the fruits that fruit hunters are looking for are varieties that have not yet entered the huge sales market of human beings, they maintain their original appearance and taste, and hide the code of life from a long time.
Su Lei said that fruit hunters use their knowledge and enthusiasm to discover the potential varieties and cultivate them, which is similar to the initial interaction of humans with fruits. "When a certain variety is loved by human beings, it has the opportunity to be artificially planted and bred, enriching people's food resources, and itself obtains a wider range of survival and reproduction."
Today, Yang Xiaoyang spends nearly 300,000 yuan a year on finding fruits in various places. The previous savings, combined with the usual remuneration for popular science lectures and company consultants, barely covered this expense. In the future, he hopes to find some companies to cooperate and carry out a wider range of fruit science popularization work.
Yang Xiaoyang said that with the development of preservation and transportation technology, people can eat watermelon, apples, bananas, pineapples and other fruits almost all year round, but as everyone knows, this is just a drop in the ocean, and there are actually hundreds of original fruits in nature that can be eaten directly.
Yang Xiaoyang introduced that he believes that there are two roles of fruit hunters, for the public, expand our fruit plate, on the one hand, the local native fruits are planted and cultivated, developed and applied, on the other hand, the fruits that are not domestic and have been industrialized abroad are introduced; for plants, their genes, seed resources, and the possibility of continuation.
Yang Xiaoyang's screen name "Unruly Scholar" has been used for many years. In the interview, he laughed that his toss-loving personality can only become a science popularization worker, not a scientific research worker. In his view, popular science is as important as scientific research, "many botanists, who study plants, do not care after publishing their papers." If there is no popularization of science, these plants will disappear and everyone will not know. ”
Red Star News reporter 丨 Pan Junwen
Editor 丨 Feng Lingling