Longhai Wenda pomelo

Longhai Wenda pomelo

　　Longhai Wenda pomelo

　　　The Duanwei Wenda pomelo has a long cultivation history. According to legend, in 1833 (the 12th year of the Daoguang reign during the Qing Dynasty), Wu Dengqing from Group 0, Tanbian Village, Duanwei Town, Xianyou County, passed the imperial examination as a Juren. The following year, while traveling to Jinhua Prefecture in Zhejiang, he tasted local pomelos with his scholar friends and found them to be of quite good quality. He asked his local friends for some pomelo saplings and brought back several to plant in the courtyard of his hometown. After several years of careful cultivation, the pomelo trees grew lush with branches and leaves, soon bloomed, and bore fruit. By the end of October when the pomelos ripened, they were bluish-yellow in color and weighed about 2 jin (1 kg) each. When picked and tasted, they had a decent flavor but were lacking in juice and had pulp with many seeds. The fruits were irregular in shape, with rough skin that affected their overall quality. Wu Dengqing felt that the pomelos he grew were noticeably inferior in quality compared to those he had tasted in Jinhua. At a gathering with friends, Wu learned that there was a young woman in Tanbian Village named Wu Jiemu, who was not only graceful and beautiful but also a famous dan (female lead) in a Putian opera troupe. A few years earlier, during an out-of-town performance, she had brought back a pomelo sapling and planted it near her house. It had since bloomed and borne fruit, and the quality was excellent—not only did it taste good, but the pomelo flesh was seedless, juicy, and pulp-free. However, the fruits were small, weighing only about half a jin (0.25 kg) each. Upon hearing this, Wu Dengqing took some of his own pomelos and visited Wu Jiemu’s home. As they tasted each other’s pomelos, they agreed that only by combining the strengths of both could they achieve truly high-quality fruit. So, they asked a fruit tree grafting expert to cut off a fruiting branch (known as a “scion”) from Wu Jiemu’s pomelo tree and graft it onto Wu Dengqing’s tree. After careful management, the newly grafted pomelo tree finally bore fruit. By the end of October at harvest time, the fruits weighed between 1.5–2 jin (0.75–1 kg) each, were shaped like large steelyard weights, and were bluish-yellow in color. The yield was also high. When tasting the inner flesh, it combined the best qualities of both: fragrant, refreshing, juicy, tender, seedless, pulp-free, and wonderfully aromatic—making it a premium-grade pomelo. Wu Dengqing and Wu Jiemu were overjoyed and regarded it as a rare and precious fruit. They named it “Wenda pomelo,” which implies that it was jointly cultivated by a “Wen” (literary, referring to the Juren) and a renowned “Dan” (female lead). The name is also elegant and subtle. Later, they carefully cultivated and continuously propagated this superior variety, giving the saplings to relatives and friends to plant. Within a few years, sporadic cultivation of this pomelo appeared in natural villages such as Baoxing, Xincuozi, and Chenku in Duanwei Town. At the time, because the yield of this pomelo was extremely low, it was mostly given as a precious gift to relatives, friends, superiors, distinguished guests, and even presented as a tribute to the imperial court by local government officials.