{"id":70818,"date":"2025-04-07T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T03:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/apr\/07\/highs-lows-china-betel-nut-industry-hainan"},"modified":"2025-04-07T12:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T03:00:08","slug":"fruit-of-the-devil-hainans-betel-nut-sellers-suffer-from-stuttering-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=70818","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Fruit of the devil\u2019: Hainan\u2019s betel nut sellers suffer from stuttering economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite its links to oral cancer, people in Hainan have for centuries produced and eaten betel nuts, which give a natural high. But sales are falling<\/p>\n<p>Many cities across southern China are known for the art of relaxing. Chengdu in Sichuan province is the tea house capital. Guangzhou is the birthplace of dim sum, a time to share steamed dumplings and chew the fat with friends. And in Haikou, the capital of Hainan province, people have been chewing the betel nut for centuries.<\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t have to walk far in Haikou to find a vendor. The small, hard, green fruits are sold in little piles alongside fresh coconuts and bottled water at pretty much any convenience store, for about five yuan (\u00a30.52) a piece. Some vendors, mostly women, sit by the side of the road to dish out betel nuts to passing drivers on mopeds, nearly all of them men.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/apr\/07\/highs-lows-china-betel-nut-industry-hainan\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite its links to oral cancer, people in Hainan have for centuries produced and eaten betel nuts, which give a natural high. But sales are fallingMany cities across southern China are known for the art of relaxing. Chengdu in Sichuan province is the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,6,2228,50,653,311,346,79,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-business","category-cancer","category-china","category-farming","category-food","category-health","category-society","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70819,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70818\/revisions\/70819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}