A few days ago, I followed my wife to a fruit market and we were both tempted by something beautiful jumping from the boxes. The bright red fruit looked extremely fresh and inviting. On a shabby piece of paper, the stall owner wrote "lian wu". A light shone on us: This was the fabled "King of Fruits in Taiwan" the wax apple.
My wife recalled, with much excitement, that her favorite Taiwanese actor Ni Minran hanged himself on a wax apple tree in 2005. Ni played the Imperial Prince in the hilarious theatrical drama We Stage Crosstalks on the Eve of the New Millennium. After his tragic death, it was reported that locals cut down the hanging tree so nobody could follow suit.
The fruit also reminds me of a story about the husband of famous novelist Eileen Chang. Hu Lancheng once walked into a forest of wax apples and was overwhelmed. The old man chose one bountiful tree and began picking and eating, "much like a goat".
When my wife and I asked the price, to our delight, it was only 6 yuan ($0.80) per kilogram. My wife was overjoyed. A friend of hers loves the fruit so much that she has to refill her supplies every week from supermarkets at 10 times the price.
My wife displayed her true nature as a Taurus: She announced she'd pick a few, but ended up stacking our fridge full of them. I was worried we would never finish all of them.
Soon, my wife lauded the wax apple as "crispy sweet like fresh tender grass". With no need to peel or get rid of the seeds, the whole fruit is edible and we gulped down all our supplies in less than two days.
But there is a side effect. Before the last fruit disappeared from our fridge, both of us began lamenting the grim days ahead without a wax apple. Another mouthful of the crispy sweet fruit, like fresh tender grass, became a driving force. We hunted the nearby fruit market every morning but could not find a single wax apple. I fully understand the genius of the Supreme Being.
With a small bite of this apple of temptation, we are hooked forever.
My wife even suspects that inconspicuous fruit seller was the Imperial Prince coming back from the Afterworld to reward his most devoted fan with his favorite fruit at an abnormally low price.
The virus of the wax fruit had a vehement force and we did something outrageous for a DINK family with low income. We made several pilgrimages to the city's largest fruit wholesale open-air market and brought back boxes and boxes of wax apples.
As I chewed one after another, I could see why elderly Hu would eat like an energized goat.
On the verge of sinking into the abyss created by our luxurious appetite, our family's fortune was saved by my better half. She made a great decision, typical of a Taurus, to purchase so many wax apples as to exceed our utmost digestive capability. The action caused an irreversible repulsion among both of us for this thing.
At last, we could say goodbye to the apple of our temptation.
(China Daily 04/12/2007 page20)
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