Have eaten more than 100 kinds of durian Domestic golden pillow up to 20 points "fruit hunter" Yang Xiaoyang
I want to be the person who knows the most about fruit in China
A ball of yarn-like sabah fruit, there are rows of compact "matchsticks" on the peel, which feel the same as touching a freshly shaved inch; the banana world's "family barrel" horn banana, a top ten, wrapped you can't eat a second one after eating; the bullet seed melon that will be ejected after ripening, the undersea coconut that is figuratively called "woman's ass fruit", and the chambord fruit that has a faint violet flavor after eating it, even sweating, urinating, and farting... These fruits that you have never heard of once appeared on Yang Xiaoyang's target list have now become his "booty". Their photos lay quietly in his computer, and only yang Xiaoyang, the owner of the photos, knew how much bitterness was behind the original "intimate encounter".
Yang Xiaoyang is 30 years old this year, and the title of "fruit hunter" has followed him for a long time. He has eaten more than 600 kinds of fruits, and there are more than 100 kinds of durian alone. Since 2013, when he aspired to be a "fruit hunter", he has traveled to hundreds of rainforests in Singapore, Malaysia and other places, taken hundreds of thousands of photos of plants, and seen more than 30,000 kinds of plants, accounting for almost 1/10 of the world. Don't look at him now like a "fruit encyclopedia", in fact, his college major and fruit are 18,000 miles apart - precision manufacturing.
Becoming a happy person who "dares to do what he likes" in the mouth of netizens, Yang Xiaoyang said that the experience of finding fruits is far less relaxed than everyone imagines, and he is not the "rich second generation" who "pays 500,000 yuan a year to find fruits to eat". On top of the curiosity, his ultimate goal is to do what he can to make some contribution to the conservation of plant diversity.
Precision manufacturing engineers plunged headlong into the botanical garden
The interview with Yang Xiaoyang was in a café, and the location of the circle of friends a few days ago showed that he was "raining in the rainforest" again, "the place is sumatra in Indonesia." This was obviously not the first intimate encounter with the Sumatra rainforest, this time he photographed the soon-to-bloom Titan konjac (aka "corpse incense konjac" because of the corpse odor). A few years ago, he had taken a picture with the flowering corpse incense konjac. It turns out once again that the tomb robbery novel that it can "eat people" when it blooms is purely imaginary, and the smell of corpses is just to attract insects to help it pollinate.
Black-rimmed glasses, healthy wheat-colored skin, backpacks, from the outside, Yang Xiaoyang is the typical "engineering man", slightly introverted, unsociable, but his eyes sparkle when he talks about plants.
Yang Xiaoyang was born in the countryside of Henan, brought up by his grandmother from childhood, and his childhood without his parents made him somewhat lonely in his personality, but fortunately, the flowers and grasses in the field gave him endless happiness. "When I was a child, I used to sprinkle in the fields barefoot, and I especially liked to watch weeds, and at that time I thought that the grass was actually very beautiful." Yang Xiaoyang said that when he was very young, he observed that the seeds of the old stork grass would roll up, and later saw in the book that it was indeed the same.
After graduating from high school, Yang Xiaoyang, who had excellent grades, chose to study in Singapore, majoring in precision manufacturing. Witnessing Singapore's "city garden" from the early years to today's "city in the garden", the progress of urban concept has touched Yang Xiaoyang, who has loved plants since childhood. In addition to his studies, his favorite thing to do is to visit the botanical garden and nature reserve, which fully satisfies his desire to explore and builds a basic understanding of Southeast Asian plants. Stepping into the door of botany, Yang Xiaoyang wandered through it, enjoying it tirelessly, "like digging up treasure".
From mechanical makers to plants, it seems to be out of bounds, but in Yang Xiaoyang's eyes, plants themselves are a very precise series of expressions, each plant is a product, but its manufacturing is more advanced, it is alive, it does not need to be driven by manpower.
In 2013, Yang Xiaoyang, who graduated from university, joined a local precision manufacturing company in Singapore. That same year, Indonesia's "burning campaign" spiraled out of control, leading to the worst smog in Singapore's history. Mr. Yang said he was heartbroken because of the possibility of many plant species on the burned hills that had not yet been discovered by the scientific community.
After the smog disaster, Yang Xiaoyang quit his job as an engineer and went directly to the rainforest of kalimantan island in Indonesia, where he wanted to find his own direction. After more than ten days of rainforest exploration, he said he couldn't walk at all, and there were too many unknown plants waiting for him to find. After that, he became even more convinced of doing something for plant conservation. Later, the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences extended an olive branch to him, and he was determined to devote himself to the cause of plant introduction and conservation.
At the end of 2013, when I first returned to China, a friend gave Yang Xiaoyang a copy of "Fruit Hunter", written by The Canadian Adam Lis Gerner. Yang Xiaoyang feels that the theme of this book is very well intentioned, but from a professional point of view, there are many elements of artistic processing, not the truth of science. Coupled with the fact that there is no "fruit hunter" culture in China, he decided to start by excavating Southeast Asian fruits and focus on the field of fruits.
Rely on the "golden eye of fire" to retrieve a life from the mouth of the python
Since 2013, when he aspired to be a "fruit hunter", he has traveled almost all over the important rainforests of Singapore and Malaysia. From November to February of the following year, it is the peak period of fruit hunting, he has to arrange his itinerary according to the fruit period of the fruit, often run out for a few days tired and half dead, come back to sort out the information for two days, and then set off again. Yang Xiaoyang told reporters that some time ago he went to the Linmeng area of Malaysia to look for turtle durian, which is different from ordinary durian trees, its fruit grows at the base of the trunk, and from a distance it looks like a group of turtles lying on its stomach. Yang Xiaoyang was particularly excited, and he told the local guide in advance not to touch it, he wanted to take a complete photo. However, the time when the turtle durian was ripe was the Spring Festival in China, and when he hurried to catch up, all the fruit fell off. "It's a week late, what a shame!"
Perennial drilling in the rainforest has trained Yang Xiaoyang's "golden eye of fire", he can search for his target like a "scanner" in a large lush rainforest, and even find new species in the plant world in the roadside forest in the speeding car, so he is often ridiculed by his fellow plant circle friends: "These eyes are worth more than 100 million." ”
With these eyes, he had "picked up" a life. It was when he was looking for paramita in the Malaysian rainforest, and from the sound of his feet on the leaves, he judged that it was a Malay paramita. As he took the camera and looked down at the fruit, an unusual object at his feet flashed by, and he subconsciously took a step back and fixed his eyes on a juvenile python about three meters long. "I was there, I didn't dare to take a picture with the camera, the python was spitting out letters sniffing my breath, if you step on it, you will be in trouble." Yang Xiaoyang said with a smile.
In addition to pythons, he has also encountered crocodiles, clouded leopards, Sumatran tigers, bears, etc. in the depths of the rainforest, and in Yang Xiaoyang's view, the most dangerous thing in the rainforest is to meet people - real hunters. "The poachers were carrying guns, they didn't care what I was doing, they beat me to death in the rainforest, and no one knew." He said that in some countries, before going to investigate, they will go to the local public security bureau to report, the police will send people with guns to protect these inspection teams, and the poachers will not dare to hurt them.
In the vast primeval rainforest, how can you find those target fruits? Yang Xiaoyang told reporters that in addition to relying on his years of plant classification expertise, searching according to the location recorded in the plant specimen is also inseparable from the help of local guides. The guides grew up in the forest and cherished all kinds of fruits, but later, the search became more and more difficult, and the fruits he was looking for did not even meet the ancestors of the guide. There will also be a situation where the guide releases his pigeons, and there is no time to find a second guide, what to do? He had to stiffen his scalp and learn some Malay words in a week of surprise, and there was no problem with daily communication.
Another great way to find fruit is to "soak" the local fruit market, another treasure trove where he first saw loquat mango with lilac eyes. Another time, in order to find a kind of fruit, you need to have a good relationship with the local indigenous people, and you have to help the indigenous fruit stalls in the traditional market to sell fruit, "the business is not bad, and the indigenous vendors next to it are red-eyed." "Yang Xiaoyang is happy in it.
The "Shennong" in the fruit world was accidentally poisoned
For the sake of "occupational disease", every time Yang Xiaoyang finds a new fruit, he must first take a careful photo. If local law allows it to be taken away, it is sealed in a plastic bag and taken home, then carefully "dissected" under the light, observing its seeds and flesh, and then tasting it carefully. In most cases, he follows the principle of tasting a small amount of food on the spot after taking photos. "Every time you find a new fruit, that euphoria dissolves all the hardships along the way." Yang Xiaoyang's taste buds have received one critical blow after another - after eating it, the mysterious fruit that is sweet after eating it, the rice cake fruit with the milk flavor of "electrocution" in the mouth, the winged fruit arrowroot with a sweetness of three thousand times the sugar of the sucrose, and the snakeskin fruit whose flesh looks like "big head garlic" and has a sweet and cool taste... Among all, Yang Xiaoyang felt that the taste that shocked him the most was the golden light fruit, although it looked like a meteor hammer, but the aromatic feeling produced by the juice was ten times better than that of strawberries.
Many people are very yearning for Yang Xiaoyang's career, calling him "the god farmer of the fruit world", but in fact, for the fruits he has never eaten, his attempts are very cautious, in his words, "otherwise I may not be able to sit here and drink tea and chat with you." In 2015, when he led a team of world soursops in a protected area in Guangdong Province, experts found the ripe fruit of the melon tree in the wild, which looked delicious. The experts began to taste it, Yang Xiaoyang was also moved to see it, first tried it with the tip of his tongue, no problem, and then ate one. After a few minutes, however, he felt something was wrong, unable to speak, and his throat felt as if it had been pricked. Then he frantically poured water and gargled, fortunately he did not eat much, and after half an hour he slowly eased up. Later, he learned that only some people were sensitive to guafu wood.
On every tropical fruit hunter's hunting list, chambord is definitely on the list, and many British nobles are very eager to find this fruit. This is a magical fruit, and legend has it that after eating it, it is full of fragrance, even sweating, urinating, and farting have a faint violet aroma. It is found only on the Indonesian island of Java and is exclusively for the Indonesian royal family. Fruit hunters who have not eaten chambord fruit are not a real fruit hunter, Yang Xiaoyang spent a lot of effort to finally find it, but because of the previous poisoning experience, he did not dare to eat more, only licked a few sips, returned to the hotel to drink more water, there was a feeling, closed the bathroom door, he quietly waited for the aroma to spread, but did not. "It may be that I have eaten too little, but I believe the legend about it is true."
Many of the fruits Yang Xiaoyang found were rare or even endangered varieties, and many people would ask him where they were found, "I will not casually expose these points, because I am not sure what he wants to do, he may destroy them." Only to some like-minded and knowledgeable friends will say. ”
Known as the "woman's ass fruit" because of its unique shape, the seabed coconut is only produced in the Seychelles, and the fruit only ripens once every few years and is now endangered. Therefore, even if it is difficult to find the traces of the undersea coconut, Yang Xiaoyang will still give up tasting it. Another time in the rainforest of Sumatra, he found some round fruit Duying, the core of the fruit inside looks very familiar, it is "Vajra Bodhi", a six-petal domestic one will sell for hundreds of yuan. After struggling with himself for a short while, he still picked up only a few of the hundreds of fruits that fell from the ground for dissection and souvenir.
The family did not have the idea of opening a Taobao shop to sell durian to make money
How many people flock to durian, how many people avoid it. Yang Xiaoyang is an out-and-out "durian controller", there are more than 100 kinds of durians that have been tasted, and even a circle of various durians is placed around the WeChat avatar. Before moving to Singapore to study in 2008, he had never tried this fruit with a special taste. The first time I ate durian was in a corner near a small wet market, sold by a 50-year-old uncle with a cigarette and a chest. Wandering in front of the stall for a long time, he carefully asked, "Aren't durians all smelly?" Why does this taste so fresh that it doesn't stink at all? The uncle's words made him unforgettable, "The real durian is not smelly, only people who do not understand durian feel that it stinks." ”
"Once into the durian deep as the sea". Eating durian for the first time made him "so happy that he wanted to cry", and since then, he has met more friends who like to eat durian, and groups have gone around looking for delicious durian. Singapore's durians could not satisfy these veteran durian foodies, so they applied for a visa and set off for Penang, the legendary mecca of durian. There, Yang Xiaoyang ate the old tree red shrimp durian that "can taste for three months after eating a bite", as well as the famous local mountain durian, black-thorn durian, centipede durian, Zhuge Liang durian...
Yang Xiaoyang said that in fact, in China, everyone's understanding of durian is very shallow, such as the open durian is mature, which is obviously a misunderstanding. Durian opening is no longer new. Domestic durian varieties are relatively single, the most famous may be the golden pillow durian. If You let Yang Xiaoyang score it, out of a full score of 100 points, Golden Pillow Durian can only score 15-20 points. There are at least 600 varieties of durian in Southeast Asia, why are so many varieties with better taste rarely seen in China? In Yang Xiaoyang's view, it is precisely because we have few choices, so there is a misunderstanding in our understanding of durian, thinking that the golden pillow is the most delicious, durian growers see this situation, they will expand planting, and slowly other varieties of durian are getting less and less.
Yang Xiaoyang wanted to write a durian monograph, which no one had done in China. His original intention is to let more people realize the diversity of durian and its beauty through science popularization, and he does not want to see more and more durian varieties die out due to market reasons. For the public, what we can do is understand the diversity of durian, so as to make independent choices and guide the market. After that, everyone will know more about the diversity of fruits, vegetables, grains, etc., which will invisibly promote the public to protect the diversity of the entire plant kingdom. This is the mission behind "Fruit Hunter" and the ultimate goal he has been pursuing.
After Yang Xiaoyang's experience was on the hot search, many people questioned, as the media said, "looking for fruit a year at their own expense of hundreds of thousands", this is not a family mine, right? He told reporters that he and the "rich second generation" are separated by ten Java islands, and the cost of being a "fruit hunter" is quite high, if you take all of them yourself, there are indeed hundreds of thousands. But many times, the search for fruit is associated with scientific expeditions, which require plant taxonomists like him to cover a large part of the cost. He even thought that when he couldn't maintain it, he would open a Taobao shop and sell durian to make money. In his first popular science book, "Fruit Hunters in Southeast Asia", Yang Xiaoyang wrote: "I fantasize that I have transformed into a durian tree at night, standing majestically in the middle of the vast tropical rainforest, quietly watching the vicissitudes of the sea and mulberry fields. ”
Article/Reporter Chen Pin
![Recommended Book | Nazi Hunter[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)