Special Yunnan Lifestyle: Mulberries, loquats await visitors to Zhenxiong

A Mulberry and Loquat Picking Event -- the third Zhenxiong rural tourism festival -- will open on April 29 in the Yanyuan town of Zhenxiong county, northeast Yunnan's Zhaotong city.

The mulberry fruit is ready for picking in the Yanyuan town of Zhenxiong county, northeast Yunnan's Zhaotong city. Photo/Yunan Daily

Held during the May Day holiday that lasts from April 29 to May 3, the five-day event will offer visitors fruit picking, rural sights, sweet mulberries, mellow loquats, mulberry wine and other local snacks.

The Yanyuan town has grown more than 2,000 mu (around 133.3 hectares) of mulberries on the mountain slopes, and the dark-red fruit is giving off mellow fragrance nowadays.

A tourist picks the mulberry fruit in the Yanyuan town of Zhenxiong county, northeast Yunnan's Zhaotong city. Photo/Yunan Daily

According to Compendium of Materia Medica -- the most important and influential text among the traditional Chinese medicine community, the mulberry fruit can quench thirst, benefiting our joints, internal organs and blood circulation.

Yanyuan also registered trademarks such as "Blue-Mulberry Love" and "Mulberry Source of Yunnan", producing 190 tons of wine from the mulberry fruit annually and 11,000 kilograms of silkworm cocoons out of the mulberry leaves.

The loquat fruit is ready for picking in the Yanyuan town of Zhenxiong county. Photo/Yunan Daily

The mulberry industry in Yanyuan has created some 600 to 700 job opportunities for local villagers, with their cooperative earning around 1.2 million yuan annually.

In addition to mulberries, the town also planted loquat threes that cover hundreds of mu, or Chinese acres. Now the loquat fruit is also ready for picking.

Reporting by Xie Yi (Yunnan Daily); Trans-editing by Wang Shixue