In mid-May, the weather was getting hotter. Tian An had just finished practicing archery in the morning and was sweating after Zhao Yiming taught her the whip technique.
At noon, I had lunch with Tian Caihe, Tian Caiping and Nanny Xiao, and then took a short nap.
As soon as I woke up, I heard the doorman come to report that Xiao Chen and Gu Jinyan had arrived.
Xiangtao went into the house and fixed Tian An's hair and makeup, then went to the hall with her.
In the hall, Xiao Chen saw Tian An coming and excitedly urged her to come over and see what he brought.
"What is that?" Tian An looked at him suspiciously, but quickened his pace.
As I approached, I saw him take out a large, oval, yellow-brown fruit from the basket. He said to Tian An, "Come and see if this is the cocoa fruit you mentioned."
Tian An looked at the fruit in his hand for a moment, then asked the maid to get a knife and cut the fruit in half vertically.
Suddenly, the white flesh wrapped with black cores were neatly arranged in the peel. However, perhaps due to improper storage, the fruit was a little rotten.
"It's this. Where did you find it?" Tian An asked after confirming.
Hearing this, Xiao Chen breathed a sigh of relief, "Finally I found the right one. All my efforts were not in vain."
Gu Jinyan looked at the two of them in confusion. "Is this cocoa fruit some kind of precious medicinal herb? What are you two looking for it for? Is someone sick and needs it?"
She was bored today, so she came to talk to Tian An. Unexpectedly, she met Xiao Chen who was also looking for Tian An.
Only now did I realize that the two of them were fighting over a piece of fruit.
When it comes to cocoa fruit, Xiao Chen gets excited and starts explaining a lot to Gu Jinyan.
I heard him praise this thing as the best in the world, but I didn't expect that this thing was just an ingredient for making a kind of candy called chocolate.
When she heard him talk about how much money, time and energy he had spent to find this fruit, Gu Jinyan immediately looked at him as if he was a prodigal son.
He spent so much effort just for a piece of candy. What else could he be but a prodigal son?
The more Xiao Chen spared no effort in bragging to Gu Jinyan about how delicious the chocolate was, the more Gu Jinyan felt that he was not doing his job properly, and her expression became uglier.
Tian An couldn't stand seeing such a tactless person, so he quickly winked at him. Only then did he notice that Gu Jinyan's face was already as dark as it could be.
Xiao Chen reacted quickly and tried to coax his future wife.
After much persuasion, he finally got his wife to give him some money, but she rolled her eyes at him.
Tian An was very curious about the way the two of them got along. He didn't expect that Xiao Chen had a masochistic tendency.
After comforting his future beloved daughter-in-law, Xiao Chen told them the origin of the cocoa fruit.
It turns out that he had already had some ideas last year.
After he got the cocoa fruit portrait painted by Tian An, he asked someone to ask the painter to copy the portrait several times, and then sent someone to take the portrait to the major markets in the capital to inquire, especially the markets where foreigners did business.
After searching for a full half month, my efforts finally paid off.
The ones who had the news about cocoa fruit were not foreigners, but people from Tianling.
The man's surname was Huang, and his name was Huang Pei. He was a merchant who came to the capital to do business. His hometown was Linzhou, Guangfu, the southernmost part of Tianling. The climate there was warm, with abundant rainfall, few winters and many summers, and it was also close to the sea.
According to him, the cocoa tree was not native to their area, but was introduced from foreign countries.
His great-great-grandfather was rescued from the sea by his great-great-grandmother while they were playing.
At the beginning, because he couldn't communicate with the locals, the villagers didn't know what he meant.
I can only rely on simple gestures to tell him simple things like eating and sleeping.
Later, he stayed with the locals for a long time and gradually learned the local language. Only then did everyone know that he came from the other side of the ocean.
Their ship encountered a strong storm at sea, causing it to capsize.
Before the boat capsized, he grabbed a bag of supplies and a piece of driftwood and drifted on the sea for an unknown amount of time. He encountered wind and waves and thought he was dead.
Unexpectedly, he was so lucky that the wind and waves swept him directly to the shore, and he was rescued by a kind-hearted girl. However, this continent was no longer the one he was familiar with.
The bag of supplies he grabbed in the moment of danger was a bag of cocoa beans. He survived at sea by eating cocoa beans. Only the last one was left when he was rescued.
Huang Pei's great-great-grandfather was a very easy-going person. He felt that he might not be able to go back to his past in this lifetime if he relied on himself, so he planted the cocoa fruits to leave a little thought for his parents.
Fortunately, Linzhou's climate and soil are quite suitable for growing cocoa.
After he successfully cultivated the saplings, he used various cultivation and grafting techniques before he finally made the cocoa fruit bear fruit.
However, in their hometown, cocoa beans are not used to make chocolate, but are eaten as fruit.
However, the locals are not used to eating it. Only Huang Pei's great-great-grandmother would sometimes do him the honor of eating one or two grains with him, as a way of respecting her parents-in-law whom she had never met.
Huang Pei's great-great-grandfather was a very good businessman. After learning the local language, he took his great-great-grandmother's family to do business and made a lot of money. In the end, the two of them got married and had children.
When his great-great-grandfather grew old, he handed over the family business to his descendants and bought a mountain to plant cocoa trees.
He also left a will, instructing his descendants that after a hundred years, he should be buried on a mountain planted with cocoa trees, as if he had returned to his hometown and finally returned to his roots.
After Huang Pei's great-great-grandfather passed away, he left behind a mountain of cocoa trees. Although his descendants would not eat the cocoa, it was left by their ancestors after all.
They also send people to take care of it from time to time, and so far, the fruit trees are still relatively intact.
Huang Pei saw someone looking for a cocoa tree with a painting. Although it looked similar, he was not sure that the fruit on their mountain was the one in the painting.
After all, so many years have passed, and they have never heard of anyone eating this fruit.
After following the servants to meet Xiao Chen, he learned that he wanted to buy this kind of fruit, so he said that he would go back and bring the fruit to him to see, and only sell it to him after confirming that it was correct.
So, the wait lasted until the next year.
Tian An looked at the fruits in the basket and said, "It's true that there are fruits, but the ones he picked are no longer usable."
Xiao Chen looked at the fruit that Tian An had cut open and said with some regret: "Well! It's all rotten, what a pity."
In his eyes, it was not a cocoa fruit, but delicious and smooth chocolate! What a pity!
“When Huang Pei picked the fruit, it was probably not yet ripe. This kind of cocoa fruit must be fully ripe before it can be picked.
If there is even one unripe fruit inside, the entire fruit will rot.
Moreover, cocoa fruit can be harvested twice a year, and now is the fruit-picking season."
It is obvious that the fruit was picked too early, and there was no air transportation in that era. How could it not go bad if it was sent from such a long distance?
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