Areca nuts in Taiwan
When it comes to pinang (areca nuts, Areca catechu), everyone will immediately think of the areca nut stalls with neon lights flashing in three colors, as well as the “areca nut Beauty.” In Taiwan, areca nut stalls are already a common sight in the roadsides, streets and alleys, but it is unimaginable that there are more than one million people engaged in areca nut-related occupations in Taiwan, and areca nut is the second largest agricultural product in Taiwan in terms of production value!
Areca nut is native to Malaysia, Indonesia, and southern China. During Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, it was introduced together with lychee and longan to northern China. Areca nut is mentioned in Sima Xiangru’s “Shanglin Fu”（上林賦）, but it was called “Renpin（仁頻）” at the time. At that time, areca nut was considered to be a precious fruit from the south, and it was also included in the medicinal materials of Chinese medicine, which had the effect of helping digestion, repelling gastrointestinal parasites and refreshing breath. Areca nuts were very popular during the Eastern Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties, but by the Tang Dynasty, the area for chewing areca nuts was restricted to southern China again. Many officials expelled to the south by the emperor, such as Liu Zongyuan（柳宗元） and Su Shi（蘇軾）, have chewed areca nuts! After Su Shi ate areca nuts, he wrote the poem “Chewing areca nuts”（食檳榔）, “Sucking the juice gets a little bit sweetness, and chewing is followed with the bitterness”（吸津得微甘，著齒隨亦苦。）! People at that time chewed areca nuts, which was very similar to the way we chew areca nuts in Taiwan now, that is, chewing areca nuts, cockles and lime together. At that time, the southern residents believed that areca nuts could help them resist the miasma of the south, so everyone chewed areca nuts, and also called areca nuts “the miasma pill”. In the Qing Dynasty, Mr. Zhao Gunong（趙古農） wrote a “areca nut book”（檳榔譜） for areca nuts. It also mentions the way people chew areca nuts in different regions.
Although the way of chewing areca nuts was to chew areca nuts, betel leaf (leaf from Piper betel) and lime together, in modern times, different regions have different ways of chewing areca nuts. The residents of Hainan Island regard areca nuts as a fruit without adding other substances; Hunanese dry the areca nut and add different flavors of brine to make candied fruit. At present, about one in ten people (about 700 million) in the world have the habit or experience of chewing areca nuts, not only people in China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, but also people in Southeast Asia, India, Pakistan and Kenya in Africa. In 1567, the Spanish explorer Alvaro Mendana witnessed an areca nut chewing for the first time in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. He was impressed by the red juice that the local residents spit out after chewing so he wrote this in his book Narrative of Mendana in detail!
As for when did Taiwan start to have areca nuts? Because the fiber of areca nuts is thick, people who have the habit of chewing areca nuts will have stains on their teeth, which has become an important method of identification in archaeology. Judging from the areca nut stains on the teeth of the aborigines of Taiwan, it can be traced back to the third millennium BC; however, areca nut became an important agricultural product in Taiwan since the 1980s. At that time, Taiwan shifted from agriculture to industry, and a large number of young people left the countryside to go to the city to find better working opportunities. At this time, areca nuts, which can be taken care of without a lot of labor, has gradually become one of the important sources of income for the aging rural areas; with urban living requiring long working hours make people in need of refreshing material, so areca nut stalls appeared in the roadsides, streets and alleys.
In the early days of Taiwan, southern China, and many Southeast Asian and South Asian regions, areca nuts were not only used to expel miasma, as a medicinal material, but also as a “gift” for entertaining guests, resolving disputes, and even men’s and women’s interactions and weddings. It was also used for religious worship or witchcraft. At that time, areca nuts was also one of the common sacrifices and had a very important social function. But in the era of Japanese occupation, because the Japanese felt that the red juice spit out from chewing areca nuts was unhygienic and disgusting, they began to use many methods to prohibit its consumption. In recent years, studies have found that areca nuts are closely correlated to the occurrence of oral cancer, and IARC has included substances from areca nuts as IARC group 1 agents, meaning it is carcinogenic to humans. Also, areca nut trees have shallow root systems, planting areca nuts on hillsides has a bad impact on soil and water conservation, so chewing areca nuts has become a bad thing!
When I was a child, there was a song singing “Areca nuts are growing on tall trees, whoever climbs it first will taste it first”, I knew for the first time that the areca nut tree grows so tall and the fruit of areca nut is edible. But I would never dream there would have so many stories related to the fruits of this palm tree!
