During hot summer, in Hengchun Peninsula, Kenting and Lanyu island of the southern Taiwan, the most special summer drink is “hardship tea”.
What is “hardship tea”? What kind of person would drink such a tea?
It is the unique name given by people of Hengchun Peninsula for pandanus tea, mainly because of the lack of materials in the early days – the “hardship people” who lived in difficulty took the fruits of Pandanus tectorius or pandanus to boil tea, which was how the name “hardship tea” came from
In addition, because the tastes and properties of the fruits of pandanus are sweet, light, and cool, together with their effects on heat clearance, detoxification, fire dispelling as well as blood sugar lowering, the fruits can cure a cold, fever, dysentery, cough, etc.
Especially during hot Kenting summer, drinking a cup of fruit tea not only quenches the thirst but also seems to help in alleviating the physical “hardship”.
This kind of pain-reliever tea is thereby called “hardship tea”.
Especially during hot summer, drinking a cup of fruit tea not only quenches the thirst, but also seems to help in alleviating the physical “hardship”. This kind of pain-reliever tea is thereby called as “hardship tea”.
In the aboriginal era, pandanus fruits were the wild fruits that the plains indigenous peoples liked to eat.
According to a predicate from Chinese literature “Za-Ji” by Shen Kaiwen in the end of the Ming Dynasty, “Pandanus…, the natives peel it off, and every grain is sweet.”
The nuclear and outer parts of pandanus fruits are hard. Nevertheless, their bases are soft. With less fiber and sweet in taste, only the ripe base can be eaten. Not only the aborigines, but also many Han people who are living in the coastal areas, have taken it as a snack granted by the earth.
Pandanus fruit is composed of aggregate fruit, the ripe fruits can be eaten raw. The taste is very similar to sweet potatoes.
When the older generation of Tao people was steaming the sweet potatoes, they would cook sweet potatoes together with some pandanus fruit pulp. Cooked sweet potatoes were sweeter and richer in taste.
Pandanus tea, which involves boiling of pandanus fruit, is also an important summer drink for early coastal residents. Now only left the residents of Hengchun Peninsula and the Tao people on Lanyu Island continue boiling this natural health summer product which contains refreshing taste and a little sweetness of winter melon sugar.
The fruit used to boil Pandanus tea could be ripe or green fruit. It is easier to peel off drupe from ripe fruits, and the tea after boiling is sweeter.
However, because the pandanus fruits only ripen in May and June, green fruits must be used during other periods.
The drupe of the green fruit is not easy to be peeled off, Kenting people use a knife to cut the pandanus fruit into half, and then peel off the drupe one-by-one.
After washing, put it into water to cook until the water boils.
Continue to boil it on a low heat for about two hours.
Then, filter out the residue after cooling. Without adding any seasoning, a natural drink with natural sweetness and delicious taste is made.
Pandanus is only regarded as coastal sand-fixing plant by most people.
Its flowers, fruits, leaves, and stems have played many different roles in the life of Taiwanese.
Even in modern times when only the fruit is still used by people to boil pandanus tea, how can we not look differently at this kind of coastal plant that has accompanied countless islanders in walking through the “hardship road”?