SAN FRANCISCO, June 11 (Xinhua) -- At a Guangdong Lychee Tasting & Cocktail Reception held on Thursday in San Francisco, U.S. state of California, more than 100 guests from all walks of life from the Golden State attended the event, which is part of the global promotion campaign of Guangdong lychee during its harvest season.

In addition to promoting lychee culture and sharing fresh fruit, the organizer has provided 12 unique courses of dishes and drinks produced with lychee, making guests fully appreciate the delicious taste of lychee, and a sweet bite of China.

The event is not only a gathering to taste the famous Chinese specialty fruit while learning about its thousand years of relevant culture, but also a venue to seek more economic and trade opportunities between China and the United States in the future.

"We have made a lot of experiments and finally worked out these menus. All the foreigners we invited here were pleasantly surprised and they loved our lychee dishes very much," said Theresa Lin, the host of the event.

Lin once served as the food stylist for Ang Lee's Oscar-nominated movie, Eat Drink Man Woman, and the catering director for Life of Pi.

While mentioning the famous Chinese poem that reads "At a horse raising red dust the imperial concubine smiled; No one knew it was for the lychee fruit it had brought," She noted that "we are going to make it a change to the poem. After our foreign friends have tasted the lychee, everyone knows that delicious fruit was brought from Guangdong."

"It is a pleasure to taste lychee from Guangdong that is one of the world's leading fruits in San Francisco," said Kansen Chu, a board member of Berryessa Union School District in the Bay Area.

"Lychee is also a very popular fruit in America. After this promotion, I hope it will be more popular and will let people know more about some of our famous fruits and local products in China," he said.

Chu wished the promotion tour a great success, believing it is a good way for people-to-people exchanges, which can help the province of Guangdong or the whole of China to develop business in agriculture with the United States.

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown also attended the event. He told Xinhua that he would put lychee to his menu, and "the opportunity to do it here in California, in particular, is fabulous because it's very authentic."

"It is just absolutely fabulous. And the sweetness, if you are into being sweet, comes without any negatives on the sugar side. It is really very good," he recommended.

Frank Meerkamp, deputy chief technology officer of Ernst & Young, has known about lychee for quite a while and is a big fan of it. Anyway, he was pleasantly surprised with the lychee-inspired menu. "The food is fantastic. It's very juicy. I was surprised by how good the chicken soup is with lychee. All the dishes you can cook with lychee were really really good, very tasty."

Lychee, as an ingredient and a raw material for cooking, is full of possibilities and can make a variety of dishes, According to Martin Yan, a famous Chinese-American chef and the host of the cooking show "Yan Can Cook".

"I call it the king of all fruits. There is lots of space for promotion and opportunities for business, so we work together to carry forward the best thing in China, the best fruit lychee, to every corner of the world," he said. Enditem

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