Luliang Honey-Scented Pear

Luliang Honey-Scented Pear

　　The Luliang Honey-Scented Pear is a specialty of Luliang County, Qujing City, Yunnan Province. It is known for its superior quality and delicious taste, featuring white, crisp, and tender flesh, a thin and smooth yellow peel. Its mellow, refreshing juice and clinging sweetness have earned it widespread praise and fame.

　　The Luliang Honey-Scented Pear has been extensively cultivated in Majie Town since the 12th year of the Republic of China (1923).

　　How was the honey-scented pear introduced to Luliang? Legend has it that during the early Ming Dynasty, when Mu Ying led military campaigns in the south and established his command in Kunming, he set up “guards” for defense and implemented “military colonization.” A large number of Han Chinese officials and soldiers from inland settled down and brought with them advanced agricultural techniques from the Central Plains, such as mulberry planting, sericulture, and weaving. Among these military colonists were many from Henan, Hebei, Anhui, and Jiangxi. At the time, Luliang only had various types of tart pears, such as sour pears and mulberry-skinned pears, which did not taste very good. The stationed soldiers took the opportunity of returning home to fetch their families to bring scions of the “Yali pear” from Hebei and graft them onto local trees. Transportation was inconvenient back then, and the over 8,000-li journey from Hebei to Yunnan by water and land made it difficult for the scions to survive the long, dry trip. It is said that someone discovered a clever method from the local people: hollowing out a radish and inserting most of the scion inside, thus safely transporting it. This is the origin of how the honey-scented pear was introduced to Luliang.

　　The successfully grafted and propagated Yali pears were initially called “fine-skinned pears.” They came to be known as “Honey-Scented Pears” during the Jiaqing era of the Qing Dynasty. Legend has it that during the Jiaqing reign, an official presented the pears to Emperor Jiaqing, who, after tasting them, praised, “Its juice is honey-sweet, and its flavor richly aromatic.” Since then, they have been called “Honey-Scented Pears.”