The Universal Jellybean

This week brought with it two holidays. September 10 was Teacher's Day and September 14 will be Mid-Autumn Festival. As a result of the holidays I got a few presents from my students. Some brought apples and flowers, pretty typical teacher gifts even in the U.S., but one of my students gave me a package of jellybeans.

At first I didn't think twice. The colors of the jellybeans were the same, red, white, green, yellow, orange, pink, and black. In my mind I was imagining the flavors of each, as I bit into my first one. To my complete shock the flavors were not the same. I had started with my favorite color in the States. I love the black jellybeans because they taste like black licorice. I knew immediately that something was different with this black jellybean. At first, my brain rejected it as though it were a piece of spoiled food. I almost spit it out until curiosity took over. I wanted to figure out the flavor of this black jellybean. After a few more bites, I solved the mystery. Black jellybeans in China are Coke flavored. Now that I knew what I was tasting, I was able to enjoy it. I wondered, "Were any of the flavors the same as those I ate back home or were they all different?" I decided to find out.

The next jellybean was a white and yellow speckled one. For those who are familiar with Jelly Belly jellybeans, it looks exactly like the buttered popcorn flavored jellybean. Again my brain tried its best to reject this flavor. It amazes me how stubborn the brain can be. Even though I expected a different taste; my palate would not comply. I chewed slowly, trying to match what I was tasting. Finally, I knew that I was tasting a youzi or pomelo jellybean. If you have worked with me or lived with me you have probably seen me eating this fruit. Maybe you even got a bite or two of it as well. It is a large citrus fruit with a thick green skin. The fruit itself is covered by a very thick membrane, and it takes a lot of work to actually eat the flesh. The flesh tastes like a sweet grapefruit though it is more dry than the flesh of most grapefruits. In China the youzi's flesh has a yellow and white color like the appearance of this jellybean.

The next color was yellow. Stateside this bean should be lemon. After a quick taste I found that this color was pineapple. Then I noticed that there was a slightly darker yellow jellybean as well. Would this one prove to be the elusive universal flavor? No, this one had a distinctive banana flavor.

Surely the green jellybean would be the same. The color was identical. It was a good bet. Wrong again. The green one was not the lime I had come to expect, but green apple instead. It was then that I realized how foolish my presumption had been. Limes are not often seen here but apples are everywhere. Of course the green one would be apple flavored.

I was starting to get better about not expecting certain tastes, especially when I knew that they weren't popular here. Knowing that the white color often was vanilla and that vanilla was not normally a popular flavor in China, I expected a difference. Sure enough the white bean was a fruit flavor, leeche to be exact. If you are in the States, I'm afraid I can't really explain this fruit to you. We don't ever see it in the supermarket, and it doesn't resemble any fruit you might know. It is delicious and very distinctive, but just found in Asia.

My hopes of finding common ground were fading fast. I only had two colors left, and I knew the next one was not likely to be the same. My hand held the red bean. It couldn't be cherry. I had never seen cherry flavored candy here. Sure enough the bright red jelly bean was strawberry instead. Which if you think about it, makes a whole lot more sense than the pink color it is given in the U.S. I guess the candy makers there had to find a different color because they had two red fruits that were popular.

Since every guess had been wrong so far, I didn't expect any common ground by the time I consumed my last jellybean. The color was orange and I decided the bean must be peach flavored. I popped it in my mouth and to my absolute surprise discovered that the orange jellybean was indeed orange flavored. Finally, the universal jellybean! I guess universal might be too strong. Just because it is the same in two countries, doesn't mean that it is the same everywhere. But at least this jellybean tasted the way I expected it. It does make you think, though. Is it really universal? I know that in many languages the color and the fruit are both labeled the same. Maybe orange is the universal jellybean.