Ever heard of Longan? While this delicious and juicy kind of fruit is very popular in China, many people living in Europe have never heard of it. Let alone, see or taste it. This yellow fruit, which looks like a glass ball, has white, and tender flesh which you should definitely try. The taste is sweet and the aftertaste is endless! Eaten as your typical fruit, preserved or used in dessert such as cakes: you can’t go wrong. For many Chinese it goes as far as ‘a summer without Longan, is an incomplete one’. Let’s dive into the story behind this magical fruit.
The story tells that a long time ago, there was a dragon in Fujian, China. When the sea tide came in August every year, this beast made trouble, destroyed crops, and houses, and killed countless people and animals. The citizens living next to the sea, had to flee their homes and hide in caves. But then, there was a young highly-skilled man, named – you guessed it – Longan. He saw what the dragon had done, and was determined to help the people. The next August, when the tide was around the corner, he prepared pork and mutton, and put them together to seduce the dragon. Of course, the dragon came ashore to eat these treats. But what he didn’t know was that the food had been soaked with a lot of wine. Before he realized it, the dragon was drunk. At this time, Longan raised a steel knife and stabbed the dragon’s left eye. But instead of an eye, Longan fruit came out. The same thing happened to the right eye. After a long struggle, Longan conquered and died the dragon. Unfortunately, so did Longan because he became heavily injured during the fight. And the poked-out eyes? They we’re never found, but the next summer this area grew lots of a kind of new fruit. In memory of their hero, the people called this fruit Longan. A fruit that has never left the hearts of the Chinese.
