Emperor Wu of Han's interest in lychee was clearly much greater than his interest in sharks. This was naturally due, on one hand, to the delicious taste of lychee, and perhaps, on the other hand, also related to the account in the "Biographies of Immortals" (Lie Xian Zhuan) stating: "Those who eat its flowers and fruit become lychee immortals."
Emperor Wu first tasted lychee around the first year of Jianyuan, the year he ascended the throne. At that time, the King of Nanyue, Zhao Tuo, presented some tribute goods. According to Ge Hong's "Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital" (Xi Jing Za Ji), these goods consisted of two items: one was a shark (referred to as a "jiao fish"), and the other was lychee.
It is difficult to judge whether the lychee delivered to Emperor Wu's palace remained fresh, as even up to the Tang Dynasty, transporting lychee from Lingnan to Chang'an via the postal route was still a difficult task. Thus, although Consort Yang loved lychee and the lychee from Lingnan were tastier than those from Sichuan, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang could only choose to have lychee sent as tribute from Fuzhou in Sichuan, as the distance was nearly half as far.
However, it is estimated that the lychee presented by Zhao Tuo would not have been pickled or sun-dried. At that time, there was no precedent for tributing lychee, and the methods of preserving lychee through pickling or sun-drying likely developed gradually later, driven by the need for tribute. In short, Zhao Tuo must have spent a great deal of money to please Emperor Wu. Sharks could be transported slowly in water tanks, but lychee required extremely high preservation standards and had a very short shelf life (as Bai Juyi wrote in "Preface to the Picture of Lychee": "Once detached from the branch, its color changes in one day, its fragrance in two days, its flavor in three days, and after four or five days, its color, aroma, and taste are completely gone"). Therefore, Zhao Tuo must have dispatched a large number of people to relay the lychee, station by station, all the way to Chang'an.
Upon receiving these two tribute items, Emperor Wu was overjoyed and rewarded Zhao Tuo with grapes and colorful brocade.
Emperor Wu's interest in lychee was clearly greater than his interest in sharks, due, on one hand, naturally to the delicious taste of lychee, and perhaps, on the other hand, also related to the "Biographies of Immortals" account of "those who eat its flowers and fruit becoming lychee immortals." It is well known that Emperor Wu was always persistent in his pursuit of immortality. Therefore, he not only ordered the Lingnan region to continue sending lychee as tribute, but also established a lychee cultivation base. That year, the army of the Great Han Empire defeated Nanyue. To celebrate this victory, Emperor Wu built the Fu Li Palace within the Shanglin Park, planting many plants brought back from Lingnan, including over a hundred lychee trees. However, lychee trees are cold-sensitive, especially young ones, which in the south still need to be covered with dry grass in winter to protect them from frost. Such plants naturally could not survive in Chang'an, but Emperor Wu persisted in continuously planting them, hoping to cultivate lychee in Chang'an just as he had successfully cultivated grapes and alfalfa.
Perhaps truly, hard work eventually paid off, and he finally managed to grow one tree successfully. Although this lychee tree neither flowered nor bore fruit, it was still significant progress. However, this tree later withered and died. Emperor Wu flew into a rage, executed dozens of the officials responsible for planting the lychee, and finally gave up, ceasing further attempts to grow lychee. The practice of tributing lychee, however, continued every year until the time of Emperor An of the Eastern Han Dynasty, when an official named Tang Qiang (the magistrate of Linwu County) submitted a memorial, unable to bear seeing "postal couriers collapsing and dying on the road," finally bringing an end to the tribute of lychee.
During the Tang Dynasty, there was also an old woman who nearly lost her life because of a lychee tree. According to Cai Xiang's "Lychee Treatise" from the Song Dynasty, at the end of the Tang Dynasty, in southern Fujian, there was a "Song Gong Lychee" tree, extremely tall and already three hundred years old. Though its fruit was small, its taste was exceptionally delicious, and at that time it belonged to the Wang family. When Huang Chao's rebel army passed through, they wanted to cut down the tree. An old woman from the Wang family, in order to protect the tree, tightly embraced it, crying and begging the soldiers of Huang Chao to let her die together with the tree. The soldiers, perhaps moved by compassion, neither cut down the tree nor took the old woman's life. This is quite astonishing, as historical records indicate that Huang Chao's soldiers were not afraid to seize and eat people.