Xinjiang cantaloupe
8 min readWith respect to traveling in Xinjiang, if you fail to eat the authentic Honey Melon, it looks like you fail to see the Tian’ anmen Square when you are in Beijing, equaling that you have not really been to Xinjiang. Honey Melon, which is one of the most featured fruits in Xin jiang, is loved by people due to its big size with more flesh, crispy and fresh taste as well as pure and lasting aftertaste, thus it is worthy of the name as “star”in the fruits.
The name of “Honey Melon”came with background, which is from the oracular words of the Emperor Kangxi. In 1698, Court of Frontier Affairs of the Qing imperial court sent Langzhong Bursy to come to Kumul for naturalization and the king of the Hui ethnic group in Kumul treated him cordially. Having eaten Honey Melon for several times, Bursy highly praised this kind of melon for its crispy, sweetness and unique flavor, so he advised the king to present it to the imperial court as the tribute. In the winter of the year, the king came to the capital to pay tribute. At the imperial banquet on New Year’s Day, Emperor Kangxi and ministers tried this honeysweet, pear-like crispy and aromatic “magical thing”, and they all praised it, but no one knows where it came from. The first-visiting Kumul king answered that “it is presented by the people of Kumul, for the emperor, empress and ministers, to express our regards.”After hearing that, Emperor Kangxi thought such a good melon deserved a brilliant and pleasant name and since it was grown in Kumul, why did not call it “Honey Melon”? When hearing the words of Emperor Kangxi, the ministers presented their happiness and all said Your Majesty was of keen intelligence and excellent judgment. Since then, Honey Melon became famous all over the world.
Several hundred years ago, Emperor Kangxi wouldn’t have expected that the naming of Honey Melon would result in a dramatic “war”in modern trademark registration. In order to fight for the certificate of origin trademark of Honey Melon, Kumul and Turpan prefectures conducted a time-consuming “war”. In 1995, Kumul Prefecture applied for registration of Kumul certificate of origin, on ground that the name “Honey Melon”was from the imperial comments of Emperor Kangxi according to the legend and that afterwards this kind of melon grown in Xinjiang was all called “Honey Melon”. The people of Kumul believed that the trademark was handed down from the ancestors, so they should protect the heritage.
However, the actions of Kumul people irritated their neighbor Turpan, because that according to textual research, the Honey Melon presented to the court by the king of Kumul was not produced in Kumul, but in Shanshan County, Turpan Prefecture neighboring toKumul. This trademark war had been lasted for 7 years, during which the two parties motivated lots of manpower and material resources to demonstrate the origin place of Honey Melon, and they even invited experts from other provincial districts. But finally, based on the common interests and the responsibility to protect the trademark, they had obtained the common view to share the interests, improve the quality of the products and protect the trademark.
Why is the name fighting lasted for so long? Is Honey Melon really so valuable? If you have such doubt, it shows that you know little about Honey Melon. It is said that all of the sweet and beautiful melons are from Kumul. Xinjiang Honey Melon has been famous since ancient days, which was called melon or sweet melon. Honey melon enjoys the good reputation of “king of melon”with the sugar content about 15%, in different shapes andwith unique flavor; some are of creamy flavor and some are of lemon flavor, but all are honeysweet with peculiar aroma. The provenance of Honey Melon is Shanshan district, where Honey Melon has always been excellent specialty in history as well as the most famous food in Xinjiang. The varieties of Honey Melon are up to over 100, including different shapes such as ellipse, oval, flat hammer and clavate; different sizes, some as heavy as 1 kilogram, some as heavy as 15-20 kilograms; two kinds of peel including chequered and smooth; three kinds of colors including green, yellow and white; as well as white, green and orange flesh, crispy and soft taste, mellow, faint and fruity flavors; which are in total over 50 valuable varieties. Donghu melon has beautiful chequer and bergamot pear flavor, which is fresh, sweet, crispy and soft, spreading out attractive milky, fruity and wine aroma. The Black Eyebrow has ellipse shape, over 10 deep green lengthwise pattern, just like the eyebrows of a beautiful woman, which features the jade green flesh, fine and juicy quality and high sugar content to stick to the hand and mouth; when eating in winter, it is aromatic, sweet and refreshing. Red Heart Crisp is orange red, crispy and juicy with milky flavor whose flavor will last for a long time after eating it. Yellow Egg hasgolden peel, small and round size as well as mutton fat fleshes which is soft and sweet; and when placing just one melon in a room, the room will be filled with aroma. Red in Snow, the thick-skinned melon developed by Xinjiang Honey Melon Research Center, is an early-mid maturity variety with about 40 days’ developmental phase, which features like that ellipse fruit, white peel and slight chequer occasionally, white with red when it is ripe; pale red flesh which is fine, tender, crispy and tastes like bergamot pear; central refractive sugar content over 15% and single melon about 2.5 kilograms. The reclamation area of Wujiaqu on the eastern rim of Junggar Basin learning the good qualities from others have cultivated amazing new varieties such as chequer aroma and bergamot pear yellow.
Honey melon is widely spread in 13 districts and autonomous prefectures in Xinjiang.
The famous producing areas include Kumul in East Xin jiang, Kashgar in South Xin jiang and Turpan, Shanshan and Toksun, as well as three counties in Turpan Basin. Miquan, Shihezi and Shawan in North Xinjiang are the up-rising stars next to them. Turpan and Kashgar have always enjoyed the name as Home of Honey Melon. As early as the Yuan (1206 A.D. to 1368A.D.) and Ming Dynasty, Honey Melon has been widely planted. At the beginning ofYuan Dynasty, Li Zhichang praised in Changchun’s Pilgrimage to the West,”The sweet melon is of pillow size whose aromatic flavor is rare in central China.”Most oases in the south and north of Mt. Tianshan can grow Honey Melon.
Different from other fruits in Xin jiang, Honey Melon is limited by the geographic environment, which can only be grown within Xin jiang. Even though there are some places outside of Xinjiang growing it locally, their quality and output is far behind that in Xinjiang. The peculiar geographic location and natural environment of Xinjiang seems to be customized for Honey melon, which is all natural. Xinjiang is located in the interior of Eurasia, featuring typical continental climate, lack of rain all year round, dry weather, long sunshine time, and large circadian temperature disparity, as well as high soil potassium content, loose soil with high sand content and slight alkalinity. All of these are exceptional and natural geographical conditions for the growth of Honey Melon.
Honey Melon is tasty, but has strong seasonality. In order to eat it all year round, the clever people of Xinjiang take advantage of the dry weather in Xin jiang to dry fresh HoneyMelon into dried ones, which is convenient for storage as well as shipping to all over China and even the world. The method to cure dried Honey Melon is simple like this-you need wash the fresh Honey Melon clean and take out seed and peel it. When separating peel and flesh, people keep a little raw flesh, because it is said that such dried fruit can reduceinternal heat, and it tastes crispier when eating. In order to satisfy the requirements of modern people for health and quality, during the process of manufacturing, people combine the traditional skills with the modern technique. The dried Honey Melon is excellent in quality, sweetness, softness and flexibility, which can invigorate the circulation of blood and enrich the blood and supplement glucose, microelements and provide all kinds of vitamins that are needed by human body. Honey Melon can be eaten directly or made into all kinds of pastries, such as dried Honey Melon, dried apricot and raisin mixed with rice to make sweet pilaf, which features the ethnic peculiar flavors. The dried Xinjiang Honey Melon, due to its unique flavor as well as being suitable for both the young and old, is soldboth domestically and internationally; therefore it is an ideal food to entertain guests, for traveling and presenting to relatives and friends.
Honey Melon is tasty and nutritious with high medicinal value. It is cold in nature and sweet in flavor, containing protein, dietary fiber and carotene and so on, whose flesh can benefit urination, quench thirst, release dysphoria with smothery sensation and prevent summer heat and so on, as well as relieve fever, sunstroke, thirst, urinary tract infection and sore mouth and nose and so on, thus it is a good item for relieving summer-heat. HoneyMelon presents clear effect on human hematopoietic function, so it can be used as dietary therapy product of anemia. If people often feel fatigued, malaise or bad breath, eatingHoney Melon can improve their conditions. It is discovered by modern medical research that the pedicel of such melons as Honey Melon contains picrotoxin; it can stimulate gastric wall to cause vomiting and taking proper amount can give first aid treatment to food poisoning, preventing absorption by intestines and stomach. Honey Melon is sweet and tasty with fine flesh, and the closer to the seed, the sweeter it is, while the closer to the peel, the harder the flesh is, so it is better to peel a little more for better taste.
Chinese medicine holds the opinions that such fruits as melon inclines to be cold in nature and also features such efficacies as relieving hunger, making for cacation, tonifying qi, clearing away lung heat and relieving a cough, which is suitable for patients of nephropathy, gastropathy, constipation, anemia and cough and asthma due to excessive phlegm. Honey Melon is not only a fruit for summer-relieving, but also the fruit for preventing generation of sunburn. Ultraviolet rays in summer can penetrate epidermis to attack dermis layer, seriously damaging ossein and elastin in the skin. In the long run, the skin will have such problems as sagging, wrinkling and capillaries emerging and meanwhile, it will generate sediment of melanin to make the skin darker and lack of gloss and result in sunburn which is hard to be removed. Honey Melon contains abundant antioxidant which can effectively enable anti-insolation and insolation-preventive abilities of the cells to reduce the generation of melanin in the skin. Moreover, eating half a Honey Melon every day can supplement water-soluble vitamin C and B vitamins to meet the needs of normal metabolism of the body. Honey Melon contains high potassium content, which helps maintain normal heart rate and blood pressure of the human body and effectively prevent coronary heart disease; meanwhile, potassium can prevent muscle spasm to facilitate rehabilitation of in jured limbs.
