Imported fruit diversity: some consumers love it, some hate it

“Foreign fruits” are becoming more and more common, with unusual appearances and quite high prices

Ms. Luo, a resident who quite likes eating fruit, often visits major fruit shops, and recently she has noticed that strangely shaped fruits are becoming more and more common. “A few days ago at a fruit shop on Donghe Road I saw a fruit with green skin, its surface covered in “scales”, so I spent 25 yuan on one.” Ms. Luo said she later looked it up online and only then learned that it is called sugar apple; the skin cannot be eaten, only the snowy white flesh inside can be eaten, and the flesh is quite sweet, but eating too much makes it a bit cloying.

Yesterday morning, at the RT-Mart supermarket, the reporter also saw a strangely shaped fruit, with yellow prickly skin, shaped very much like a large sea cucumber; its peculiar appearance attracted quite a few customers to stop and look. “This is called kiwano, said to come from Africa.” Ms. Wang, a resident, not long ago spent 20 yuan on a kiwano to try something new; according to her, after this fruit is cut open it has green seeds, which must be scooped out and mixed with honey to eat. “It tastes a bit like cucumber, the texture is so-so, and the value for money is not high.”

Placed side by side with the kiwano was another rare fruit, its skin like snakeskin and quite rough to the touch, priced at 27.9 yuan per jin. According to supermarket staff, this fruit is snake fruit from Thailand. “Snake fruit flesh is crisp; unripe flesh is rather white and sweet-and-sour, while ripe flesh is yellow and fairly sweet.” But he also said that some customers who bought it liked eating it very much, while quite a few said the smell of snake fruit was hard to accept.

⟦NL> Distributor: overly exotic foreign fruits do not sell well, and residents should also be careful when buying in case merchants pass off “Chinese” as “foreign” and pass off inferior goods as good ones

Although there are more and more novel foreign fruits on the market, in the view of distributors the sales situation is not good. “Among imported fruits, apart from relatively common varieties such as mango, durian, kiwifruit and cherries, which sell relatively well, other strangely shaped fruits do not sell well.” Mr. Ke, the person in charge of Xinyang Fruit, told the reporter that for things like avocado and kiwano, not to mention the high price, the taste cannot be called good either, and not many people buy them.

Another fruit distributor who was unwilling to disclose his name told the reporter that when buying imported fruit, one should be careful in case merchants pass off “Chinese” as “foreign” and pass off inferior goods as good ones. “Many so-called imported fruits sold on the market now are actually fruit varieties introduced from abroad by fruit growers and then planted domestically.” The distributor said that some currently labelled “American red grapes” are actually from Shandong, what is labelled “American navel orange” is actually grown in Jiangxi, and kiwano and snake fruit are already grown domestically too.

In addition, the distributor said that even for the same kind of imported fruit, quality varies. “The most obvious example is imported cherries; New Zealand, Chile and the United States all grow them, and Chile’s quality is the best, but many customers do not understand this and pay a high price without buying good ones.” He also told the reporter that because imported fruits often require long-distance transport, they are usually picked when only sixty or seventy percent ripe, which also lowers how delicious they are. “Quite often some customers who have bought imported fruit tell me it does not taste as good as what they ate in the fruit’s place of origin.”