He and his father have been spending more time together than ever before.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Philip, 28, returned home to Chino Hills to be near family. The farm now produces 20,000 pounds of fruit annually, all of it picked by father and son. When deciding what to plant, he remembered eating mandarins with his wife in China during the Lunar New Year and planted 100 saplings in the backyard. Eventually, he settled in Chino Hills with his wife in 1997, purchasing 2 acres of land. I think that’s the only way.”Īfter the Cultural Revolution ended with Mao’s death in 1976, Xiao, now 64, earned a scholarship to study in the U.S. “It’s the same thing right now the country is split, people have different opinions and blame each other, but what can you do? You just have to do your part and do the right thing and live with it.
“Here’s the thing, you just have to find a way out,” Xiao said. Yet Xiao said he found some meaning in the simplicity of farming. The Cultural Revolution was a campaign of communist leader Mao Zedong to purge the country of capitalist influence, with millions persecuted or killed. Xiao’s relationship to farming is complex he was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution in China for reeducation through agrarian labor. Largely due to Philip’s efforts, the Kishu is showing up this month - just in time for Lunar New Year - at specialty ice cream shop Awan in West Hollywood under the moniker the Mandarin Man, which is also the name of the Xiao family business. The buzz has been amplified by his son Philip, who is never found without a stash of the fruit in his trunk or luggage. Xiao’s brilliant orange fruit has been making its way to chefs’ kitchens throughout L.A. “During the holiday season Chinese people keep oranges in their houses because they hope it will make them lucky.” “The Chinese word for ‘orange’ and ‘luck’ have the same sound,” Xiao said. The fruit is just as promised: It has a beautiful floral scent, and when I eat a sliver of it, the sun warms my face as the citrus warms my throat. As we paused among the trees in his Chino Hills orchard, he picked several from a low branch. The Kishu, a rare and exceptionally sweet fruit, has a narrow harvest window that typically coincides with the Lunar New Year. Bruce Xiao trudged ahead of me in his Kishu mandarin orange groves carrying a tiny Chihuahua in one arm.
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