New Textual Research on the Early Introduction of the Watermelon into China

This paper argues that the Xunzhi (寻支) melon of the Molu State (末禄国) recorded in the book Jingxingji (经行记, Notes on Travels) is watermelon, and that Du Huan (杜环) of the Tang Dynasty was the first Chinese person to witness, eat and record watermelon outside Chinese territory according to historical records. In the Five Dynasties period Hu Qiao (胡峤) was the first person to eat watermelon in China according to historical records. He “began to eat watermelon” around the 15th day of the lunar calendar in the first year of Liao Datong (947). The specific place was present-day Chifeng, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It is located near Tianshan Town, where the government of Alu Horqin Banner is located. The source records that “the Khitan broke the Huihe and obtained this species” in the 3rd year of Tianzan (924) while “taking Futu City”. The watermelons in Futu came directly or indirectly from Gaochang (now Turpan), the capital of the Xizhou Uighurs. The Khitan (Liao) method of “planting watermelons covered with cow dung” originated from Han territory. This is a cultivation method that combines wind barriers and greenhouse coverings, and those growing the melons should be Han Chinese. Hong Hao (洪皓) was the first to successfully introduce watermelons to the region south of the Yangtze River in the eighth month of the lunar calendar in the thirteenth year of the Shaoxing reign period of Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty (1143). Watermelon was grown and harvested for the first time in southern China in the fourteenth year of Shaoxing (1144). The dashi (lit. “big stone”) melon mentioned in the unearthed Xixia document “Miscellaneous Characters” (Zazi杂字) written in Chinese is watermelon, which comes from the so-called “big stone country”, that is, the Qara Khanids. This “big stone melon” has the same origin as the watermelon obtained by the Khitan, and both were introduced from the Samanids to the Qara Khanids between 893 to 915.