Pearl Corns of Cameron Highlands 珍珠玉蜀黍

Every other person who has been here talks about the corns. Waited for the rain to stop and charged to the night market skipping dinner to get the best of corns. There were so many stalls selling corns and at prices so varied, my skepticism went on high alert. I mean, how can they all be the same with such varied prices. One stall at RM 10 for 4 and not willng to budge an inch on the price while another sells RM 10 for 10! Randomly, I bought RM 10 for 7 (middle path?) and settled back because my back started aching a bit (still recovering from the fall during mountain biking). Still feeling something amiss, I stopped and asked. Here comes the revelation:

There are two types of so pearl corns - the ones from the highlands that takes 100 days to mature and each plant only bears one corn while the one brought up from the plains to sell takes half the time to mature and each plant can bear two to three corns each time. The practical difference for the one eating it? The real highland corns are much sweeter and juicier. But to the untrained, they look the same. What I learned from the sellers?

This is the 15 year old guy who sells real pearl corns. People there call him Ah Hong which he was quick to respond that it's just his nickname. Who would name their children Ah Hong he protested with cheekiness. Anyway, his dad owns the farm, and he claims he will be there to man the stall every night on Fri and Sat and the mornings of Sun. He reminded me to mention that his stall is the one next to the only home made ice cream stall (by the way, the beer flavoured ice cream I bought tasted terrible. Could not finish even half. Can you imagine Samuel not finishing his ice cream!)

The real on the right put next to the fake one. By looking, a fool would say it's the same. The intelligent will say they are similar and try to find the similarities. The wise, would look for the differences and discern the real from the fake. Now, says who philosophy is useless for daily life.

The kernels are bigger and the cob is smaller for the real one. But the real test is putting them into your mouth and taste the difference!