China’s durian craze has turned this tropical fruit into a tool of diplomacy

By Ming Gao, Research Fellow of East Asia Studies, Lund University
Tabita Rosendal, Researcher at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University

Distinctive in taste and famously divisive, durian is not everyone’s choice of fruit. This was certainly the case for some Chinese explorers when they first encountered it during the Ming Dynasty’s early maritime voyages.

One record dates back to 1413, when a translator called Ma Huan travelled to what is now Malaysia on a trip with diplomat and admiral Zheng He. In his travelogue, Ma…

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