Longan

Longan

　　Longan, also known as "guiyuan" (longan fruit), is warm in nature and sweet in taste. It benefits the heart and spleen, nourishes qi and blood, and has excellent tonic and nourishing effects. It can be used to treat symptoms such as insomnia, forgetfulness, palpitations, and dizziness caused by deficiencies in the heart and spleen or lack of qi and blood.

　　The fresh form is longan—the fruit—while the dried form is longan—the tonic. In other words, dried longan is what we call longan.

　　In the past, because fruits could not be preserved easily and were not convenient to transport, longan was always dried before being shipped to northern regions. Since longan was predominantly produced in Guangxi (referred to as "Gui"), and the fruit is round in shape, people in the north called it "guiyuan" (longan). (It’s unclear whether it was due to taboos against saying “dragon” [long] in feudal times, hence the fruit couldn’t be called “longan,” so the official term used in the north is also “longan.”) As a result, they did not know that the original form of longan was the fresh fruit.

　　Later, when fruits could be better preserved and transported more conveniently, longan began to be shipped to the north as a fresh fruit. But people in the north, who had only been familiar with its dried version—the “longan”—started calling the fresh fruit by the same name.

　　Therefore, in southern regions, the fruit is more often called by its original name, "longan," while in central and northern China, it is more commonly referred to as "longan" (the dried tonic version).