Sweet and pure
September is apple time in Taiwan. This may sound like strange news coming from a sub-tropical island, but the high mountains that occupy 80 per cent of Taiwan's area create many microclimates: pockets of flat or gently sloping land that are profitably given over to fruits usually associated with more temperate climates.
I had only been living here a few months when I discovered these exquisite mountain apples. Much smaller than their imported commercial cousins, they have a sweetness, yet also a sharpness, of taste that carries with it the genuine buoyancy and brio of fresh mountain air.
I buy them in the autumn from the back of a farmer's truck - the same way you get Taiwanese strawberries in February, all over Taipei. The apples were always harder to find than the strawberries, but now I have discovered a more reliable source: my local health-food store.
This opened a couple of years ago to what I suspected was a generally sceptical public. Its shelves were stocked with common vegetables at uncommonly high prices, plus enormous amounts of pills, lotions, dietary supplements and herbal extracts guaranteed, I used to joke, to make you live forever.
But few customers were in evidence. This will never catch on here, I thought. The Taiwanese - while often easy victims of the sales pitch and susceptible to buying anything with a hint of increased social status - remain faithful to their traditional open-air markets and 24-hour supermarkets. Recently, however, I walked into the same store in mid-morning to find it overflowing with customers. They were lined up at the old-fashioned sales counter with arms full of vitamin-rich cabbages and pesticide-free carrots, not to mention a good selection of the lotions and potions as well.
And there in a corner smiled a pile of my ruddy-cheeked mountain apples. 'They're delicious,' said the young female assistant, using one of the first English words Taiwanese learn, and which they seem to particularly enjoy pronouncing. I bought a kilo, shuddering only slightly at the price. And when I got home I consumed them until the juice ran down my chin.
I ate every part of them - the core, the pips, the black remains of the little flower - and contemplated devouring even the stalk. It was too good to throw away, I thought. Perhaps it would do as a toothpick.
These little apples are testimony to the continuing beneficence of nature, even in these days of genetically modified food, irradiated fruit, sterile seeds and other associated horrors. Long may they continue to imbibe their sweetness from the pure mountain air.
