How did Fuyuan become the "Cranberry Capital of the East" without telling the whole country?

When the sweet tangerines and mandarin oranges from the south shine into the vast land of Northeast China, the hospitality DNA of Northeastern people is activated again. Soon, 100,000 boxes of cranberries crossed Shanhaiguan and arrived in Nanning, Guangxi. This generous gift of cranberries made the Northeastern friends slowly ask a question: Mom, when will we have cranberries at home?

The picture comes from the Internet

The gift was sent from Fuyuan, a small border town in the northeast, which belongs to Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang Province.

This easternmost city in my country's territory is not only my country's "City of the Rising Sun", but also has the largest cranberry planting base in China and even in Asia.

Fuyuan is known as the "Easternmost Point of China". The picture shows the sunrise at Fuyuan Dongji Square in Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang Province. The picture is copyrighted by the library. Reprinting and using it may cause copyright disputes.

How did Fuyuan become a cranberry producing area? To answer this question, we have to start with the growth environment of cranberries. Here is a little-known fact:

Cranberry is not a plant, but a type of plant. It is a general term for edible red berries of the genus Vaccinium. Cranberry has some special requirements for the growing environment. It likes to grow in swamps in cold regions. Its soil requirements are also quite different from other fruits. It prefers acidic soil. Even on a global scale, cranberry is only grown in temperate and cold regions such as the United States, Canada and Chile.

Wild cranberries growing on swamp moss. Copyright image. Reproduction may cause copyright disputes.

However, under such multiple restrictions, Fuyuan is not only close to Wisconsin, the largest cranberry producing area in the United States, in latitude, but also has similar climatic conditions such as temperature and precipitation, and the soil is mainly weakly acidic peat. Fuyuan is located in the cold temperate continental monsoon climate zone at 47° north latitude, with an average annual temperature of 3.4℃. It has two major water systems, the Heilongjiang River and the Wusuli River, 33 large and small rivers, and a total water area of ​​26,753 hectares.

Due to the high latitude and low temperature, the evaporation from the soil surface is relatively weak. In addition, the river floods from time to time, and the accumulated water mixes with the soil to form continuous swamps.

With its extensive river system and numerous lakes and wetlands, it is no exaggeration to call this place the "Great Water Town of Northeast China".

Sanjiang Plain Wetland. Copyright image from the photo library. Reprinting and using it may cause copyright disputes.

What’s even more interesting is that Northeast China itself has its own “cranberry”. The “northern red bean” lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea), known as “Yageda” by Northeastern people, is a “same genus” brother of cranberry and looks very similar to it.

This kind of berry is very "wild". It is grown in the northern part of the Greater Khingan Range in the northernmost part of the Northeast and the tundra zone of Changbai Mountain, the highest altitude in the Northeast. It can grow even in temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius. It is a native species native to the Northeast.

Lingonberries in Daxing’anling. Image source: Arboretum of the Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China. Photographer: Zhang Qiang

In this cranberry rush, lingonberries also took advantage of it, selling like hotcakes under the alias of "little cranberries" and being snapped up by netizens who wanted to try them. At this moment, it's hard not to feel like Fan Wei and sigh: What a fate.jpg

Image source: Screenshot of a platform

02 However, if you want to develop the cranberry industry, it is not enough to just meet the natural conditions for cranberry growth, the scale of the land must also be high enough. How should this sentence be understood?

There are two ways to harvest cranberries: one is "dry harvest" and the other is "wet harvest". "Dry harvest" means picking by hand, but cranberry plants are very short and the fruits are still hidden under the leaves. It is time-consuming and laborious to rely solely on manpower. Therefore, "wet harvest" has become the main form of harvesting. This also takes advantage of the characteristics of the cranberry fruit itself: There are some hollow cavities inside the ripe cranberry fruit, which are like a small air bag, allowing the cranberry to float lightly on the water.

The internal structure of a cranberry. Copyright image. Reproduction may cause copyright disputes.

Every year from September to early November is the cranberry harvest season. The fruit needs to experience at least one frost before it is suitable for harvesting. The slightly cold weather gives it a unique deep red color, which is translucent and round, like agate, and is rare to look at. Before harvesting, workers will build water-retaining fences around the cranberry field, and then pour water into the field, so that the water covers the plants and turns the field into a large pool for collecting berries.

As the fruit thresher slowly passed by, large flakes of plump, bright red berries floated on the pond water, dyeing the mirror-like paddy fields red.

Then use a net to gather and collect the cranberries together, and the harvest is complete.

This method not only greatly improves the efficiency of cranberry harvesting, but also can screen out some of the poor quality or rotten fruits. If the cranberries are not full or have been infested by insects, the fruits will sink into the water. "Free" water has become the first screening process for cranberries, and there is basically no need to screen the fruits again later, which saves time and effort and is relatively low in cost.

But not every place can achieve such a spectacular "cranberry sea". "The planting area of ​​a crop like cranberry must reach a certain scale. The larger the scale, the more cost-saving it is, because everything is a set of mechanized equipment. If you plant 100 mu of land, it is one set, and if you plant 500 mu of land, it is still the same set."

Do you still remember the description of Northeast China in our high school geography textbooks - "vast land and sparse population"? According to the seventh census, there are 97,300 people living in Fuyuan on 6,047.1 square kilometers of land, and the per capita arable land area reaches 50 mu, making it the second county-level city with the most per capita arable land in the province. The rich land resources allow Fuyuan to achieve continuous planting and mechanized harvesting, and the mechanization rate of agricultural production has reached more than 98%.

Cranberry harvesting in Fuyuan. Image source: Xinhua News Agency

The theme slogan of the Harvest Festival is composed of fresh cranberries. Image source: Fuyuan Publicity

With the right time and place, harmony among people is indispensable.

In fact, before this unexpected popularity, Fuyuan had been working hard silently for more than ten years.

In 2010, cranberries were introduced from North America to China for experimental planting. Within five years, Fuyuan started from learning and imitating, learned the technology of mechanized planting of cranberries from American farms, and finally cultivated local cranberry seedlings after overcoming many difficulties. In 2022, Fuyuan cranberries were also carried into space on the "Shenzhou XIV" manned spacecraft, setting a precedent for the world's cranberry "space breeding". Today, Fuyuan has 4,200 acres of cranberry planting area, supplying 40% of Asia's cranberry production. Moreover, since the General Administration of Customs has not yet approved the import license for fresh cranberries, this also makes Fuyuan the only place in China that can supply fresh fruits-and also gives Guangxi "cousins" and every one of us who are watching the passers-by the opportunity to taste the taste of fresh cranberries. 03 In fact, from the perspective of catering, the scene of cranberries being eaten as fresh fruits is not very common. Because fresh cranberries are very sour (very sour, very sour, very sour!!!), almost all cranberry products need to add a lot of sugar. Sugar softens the sharp sourness of cranberries, and the fresh fruity aroma makes it add a unique flavor to food. In the origin of cranberries, in addition to the relatively familiar dried cranberries and cranberry juice, cranberry jam is a very popular way to eat it. It is used to spread on bread or paired with large pieces of meat such as roast turkey and roast lamb legs to relieve greasiness and enhance flavor.

Cranberry jam. Copyrighted images from the gallery. Reproduction may lead to copyright disputes.

In Fuyuan, the Northeastern "old friends" also creatively combine this flavor ingredient with local tastes to form unique cranberry creative dishes.

For example, the cranberry pot-fried fish is a must-try dish when you come to Fuyuan.

Cranberry pot-wrapped fish. Image source: Screenshot of CCTV's "Frontier Flavor: Fuyuan"

As a water town in the northern polar region, Fuyuan's cold-water fish has long been famous. The fish meat, which is of exceptional quality, is coated with batter, deep-fried in oil until golden brown, removed, and then fried again after the oil is drained, and then seasoned with cranberries. With one bite, the whole dish is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, with a natural fragrance in the sweet and sour taste. At this moment, the fruity aroma from North America collides with the tradition of the Northeast black soil, and people who love food seem to have gained a soul resonance across time and space. In the rich taste, it also seems to give us a glimpse of the courage and tenacity of Fuyuan in developing cranberry planting over the years.

Quick Facts

1. Although Fuyuan has the largest cranberry planting base in China and even in Asia, its share of global cranberry production is actually not high. According to the "2021 China Cranberry Industry Analysis Report", in 2019, the cranberry production in Asia as a whole only accounted for 1.94% of the global total cranberry production, so it is not that Fuyuan is "hiding" from everyone, but that the current production scale of local cranberries is indeed relatively small. However, cranberries are a fruit with a long planting cycle of "three years to bear fruit and five years to produce a good harvest". In the future, we will definitely see more Fuyuan cranberries on the market.

2. You may have heard about the various magical effects of cranberries, such as anti-oxidation, prevention of urinary tract infections, etc., but these health effects have not been scientifically verified. If you like the taste of cranberries, there is nothing wrong with eating them as a fruit, but if you eat them for their health benefits, you may be disappointed, especially because cranberry products have a very high sugar content.

References

[1]https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_25964410

[2]https://www.guokr.com/article/448627/

[3]https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20240115A088R800

[4]http://www.iae.cas.cn/smy/kpjy/kpzs/202401/t20240108_6951812.html

Planning and production

This article is a work of Science Popularization China-Starry Sky Project

Produced by: Science Popularization Department of China Association for Science and Technology

Producer｜China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.

Author: Zhan Yimeng, popular science creator

Review丨Gu Yourong Associate Professor of the School of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, PhD in Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Planning: Lin Yiyi, Yang Yaping

Editors: Xu Lai, Yang Yaping