Six Fruits You Should Try in China China is known around the world for its excellent and varied cuisine, and many tourists come to the country to enjoy Peking duck, dim sum, and Lanzhou beef noodles, to name just a few famous dishes. However, even when you are not at the dinner table and are looking for a tasty and delicious snack, there are countless varieties of fruits you can buy and try in China. Many of these fruits mentioned below are difficult or impossible to acquire outside of China. Some do not even have names in English. These 6 fruits discussed come in numerous shapes and sizes. They vary wildly in taste, nutrition, and growing conditions. Some are challenging to acquire even in China, and are only available in certain regions and during certain seasons. 1. Yumberry The yumberry grows in southern China and can be difficult to find. It is a small red fruit with a large pit, and is very sweet and juicy. This is a great fruit to eat on summers, and is similar to a blend between a strawberry and a plum. This fruit is quite popular and easy to find in Yunnan province in southwestern China. 2. Mulberry The mulberry is famous for its leaves, which are the only food source that feeds the silkworm and helps produce silk. However, the fruit is very delicious. It comes in black, red, and white colors and is soft and gently sweet, like blackberries and raspberries. Many street vendors sell mulberries, and they are readily edible. White mulberries tend to be less sweet than other varieties, but are still delicious. The fruit looks like a blackberry, but is longer and thinner. 3. Starfruit Starfruit is a rather sour and hard fruit, but it quite healthy and tasty. It is a generally yellowish green fruit that is shaped like a five-pointed star. Also called carambola, it is available in tropical parts of China. The entire fruit is edible, and is generally cut into thin slices. It can even be cooked with fish and other foods in Chinese cuisine. 4. Lychee While it looks like a slightly larger version of the yumberry, lychees are quite different in their flavor. Popular with Chinese emperors and empresses, the lychee has a shell that ranges from brown to pink, with pink lychees being the ripest. The inner flesh is white, very juicy, and tastes wonderfully sweet and cool. Each lychee contains a dark brown inedible seed. Chinese have grown lychee trees since 2000 BC, and lychees are very nutritious, providing a high amount of vitamin C and being low in saturated fat and sodium. The Tang dynasty consort Yang Guifei loved eating lychees, and Emperor Xuanzong ordered lychees to be delivered on horseback over hundreds of miles to satisfy her cravings. 5. Luo Han Guo It is actually not common to eat this fruit like any other fruit. It is very obscure outside of Asia, and English names for it include arhat fruit, Buddha fruit, monk fruit, or longevity fruit. Growing in southern China, mainly Guangxi province, it is a round and hard dark fruit that looks a bit like a mangosteen and has extremely high sugar content, so it can be processed and used as a sweetener. The plant extract is 300 times sweeter than sugar. The rind can be used to make tea. This fruit is named after arhats, or Buddhist monks who attained enlightenment, because Guangxi contains many Buddhist temples. 6. Pomelo I discovered pomelo when my roommate brought one home and told me it was “delicious” (because she didn’t know what it was called). And it is delicious. It tastes like an orange, but with a mellower flavor. The texture and appearance are like a grapefruit, although the pomelo is even bigger. Remember to ask the fruit seller to slice it open for you when you buy it, because the skin is quite thick. It’s spongy and peels off pretty easily once you get it going, then you have to peel the individual segments. The membrane is bitter than oranges, but it comes off in big pieces so take the time to get the fruit all the way down to the pulp before eating.