The fruit of his labor is a better understanding of, well, fruit. Having sampled more than 1,000 species, Yang Xiaoyang can easily meet whatever the criteria is for a fruit hunter. He has embarked on a search to peel away the mysteries and get to the core of what so many of us take for granted.

Yang, 32, was born in rural Henan province and he has explored hundreds of rainforests and orchards around the world since 2009, recording over 30,000 species of plants, nearly 10 percent of the world's total.

From the endangered Lodoicea maldivica (sea coconut) that grows only in the Seychelles to the rare Keppel apple, which ancient Indonesians believed would make one's body fragrant with a distinct scent of violets, these bizarre fruits are all documented by Yang.

"Fruit is nature's gift, connecting humans and nature," Yang says. "When you eat a fruit, it is like communicating with nature through the plant's unique language, such as taste or flavor."

Yang, whose online username is Buguai Shusheng, has been labeled the man who has tasted the most types of fruit in China and he has garnered more than 1 million followers on micro-blogging platform Sina Weibo. He also opened accounts on short-video sharing sites, including Baidu Baijiahao, Xigua and Bilibili.

Although fruit hunting is a sector that is still in its infancy in China, more botanists, Yang being one of them, have been building the connection between fruit lovers and fruit. A Sina Weibo user named Budaibudai comments that Yang's posts explain not only how to choose fruit, but also chart the journey of various fruits from branch to table.

In 2018, he cooperated with China Central Television on the six-episode documentary series, Legend of Fruit, in search of 50 interesting fruits across 50 cities in 15 countries. It obtained a rating of 8.7 points out of 10 on popular review platform Douban. The same year, his first book was published. It selected 37 species of fruit that he recorded in Southeast Asia. Wang Wencai, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote in the preface: "The book draws readers into the Southeast Asian world of fruit."

On Oct 16, a documentary series, The Fruit Hunter Yang Xiaoyang, is set to be released on the Baidu and Haokan apps, with new episodes every Friday and Saturday. Viewers will join Yang on his thrilling journey to explore Hunan, Jilin and Yunnan provinces in search of different types of fruit.

"Through various platforms and media, I try and help people learn more about fruit," Yang says.

A blossoming interest

In 2008, before his obsession with fruit began to blossom, he went to Singapore to study for his bachelor's degree in precision engineering. He was amazed by the local tropical plants.

Each weekend he would visit botanical gardens or nature reserves and the first steps of his fruitful journey began at a local roadside durian stall one year later.

"It is not me who finds fruit, it is the fruit that finds me," Yang says.

Durian, the fruit belonging to the genus Durio, has about 35 recognized species with more than 600 named varieties, mainly in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. As a keen durian lover, Yang has tasted more than 100 types, of which the wild Sukang variety, with its red flesh, has impressed him most.

"When my friend found one for me and stored it in his refrigerator, I booked the flight ticket from Singapore to Malaysia immediately. It was an unforgettable experience when I flew there and opened it with my own hands," Yang recalls.

In a quest that has taken him around the world, Yang spent more than 500,000 yuan ($74,049) in his search for exotic fruits between 2009 to 2015.

Following his graduation in 2012, Yang became an engineer in Singapore. The following year a record-setting haze settled over the city-state, caused by slash-and-burn land clearances in Sumatra, Indonesia, to the west of Singapore.

"It was heartbreaking to see so many species dying as a result of the man-made fires," he says. It was then that he decided to quit his job and devote himself to plant conservation.

"Human understanding and exploration of nature is quite limited and remains shallow. It is easy to destroy a species, but from an engineer's point of view, it is incredibly difficult to re-create one," says Yang. "As an engineer, my contribution can be ignored, but as a fruit hunter, I think I can make a difference."

He started to help the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences join in the plant exchange program with a research institute from Southeast Asia. He is also working with the academy's Chinese Field Herbarium on the Chinese naming of regional, tropical plants. So far, he has given 2,000-odd plants Chinese names.

Ripe with knowledge

Having explored most of the rainforests in Southeast Asia, Yang has arranged his trips according to harvest seasons, generally from June to August and from December to February every year.

"Every trip is an adventure, full of unknowns," Yang says. Sometimes it takes several trips to search for a fruit, and quite often hours of trekking in the rainforest ends with no success, as the fruit may not have ripened enough or has already been picked by someone, or something, else. "But there are also surprises when you encounter a fruit that is even more attractive than the one you are searching for."

Expeditions in the rainforests－home to over half of the world's fruit species－can be dangerous, with harmful plants and wild animals all posing a threat. Yang has encountered pythons, crocodiles, clouded leopards, Sumatran Tigers and even bears.

"But the real danger comes from hunters or poachers with guns－they don't care who I am and can kill me without anyone ever finding out," Yang says. To better protect himself, before some expeditions, he will register for a police escort at the local police station.

Yang also has to be cautious about the fruit he tastes, a lesson he learned the hard way. In 2015, when he led a team to explore a nature reserve in Guangdong province, something unexpected happened after he sampled some Fissistigma kwangsiense, a species native to China. After sampling some fruits, several minutes later, he experienced burning and irritation of the mouth and was unable to speak. Luckily, he was able to find relief from the symptoms of this apparent allergy after half an hour of guzzling water.

Despite such challenges, he is determined to keep fruit hunting, as answering unknown questions and uncovering new facts about a fruit is always one of his targets. "Documented allergies to fruit are scant, but my experience indicated that a small number of people are allergic and at risk, therefore I want to record them to enable a greater understanding of the issue," he says.