Hollywood Renaissance man would have loved Yunnan 'gold'

My recent discovery of a tasty, natural Chinese delicacy prompted memories of my late friend Jerry, a true Renaissance man who possessed wide and deep knowledge on topics ranging from organic agriculture to the history of jazz.

An extraordinary chef who trained in Switzerland, Jerry once explained to me, in amazing detail, how the flavor and texture of the humble hamburger will vary depending on the order in which you stack the beef patty, cheese, tomato slices, onions and lettuce.

He was also an expert on American pop culture. The last time I saw him, he gave me and another friend a daylong tour of some of Hollywood's hidden gems, including the iconic Batcave from the 1960s television series Batman.

Jerry grew up in the Hollywood Hills and attended Hollywood High, and once told me how, on his daily walks through the hills as a teenager, he would be greeted by the famous American children's book author Dr. Seuss, as he watered flowers in his driveway. Jerry took me several times to the late author's distinctive pink former home, which is tucked away on a tree-lined lane.

Furthermore, Jerry, whose last name, fittingly enough, was Growe, had such thorough knowledge of organic farming that he was hired as the personal gardener for the family of Walmart and Sam's Club patriarch, Sam Walton.

The bookshelves in the den of Jerry's West Hollywood home were chock-full of interesting reading. Among the myriad books was an illustrated coffee-table volume that noted similarities between the Tibetan ethnic group and the Navajo Indians, right down to identical patterns on their pottery, concluding that the two groups are, in fact, one and the same, but long separated.

An accomplished musician, he had dozens of valuable guitars and bass guitars stashed away in a hidden passage of his apartment where no burglar would ever find them.

Jerry was also well-versed in the seemingly magical properties of honey, including its antibacterial nature, and was the one who first told me how, when applied to a wound, honey will prevent infection. He also insisted on consuming only unprocessed honey and, whenever possible, local honey because it would be in harmony, botanically speaking, with the consumer.

And so my well-read friend would have been greatly pleased to hear about my recent encounter with wild honey harvested in the lush mountains of Yunnan province.

Hu Taipeng, a good friend in Beijing who is an expert on tea, introduced me to this rich but mellow black honey. A tea farmer he knows in Yunnan collects the honey for her family's use, and she sent some to Hu to see whether there might be market interest outside of Yunnan (which, by the way, is not only a historical tea hub, but also has become a coffee growing and production center).

My ears perked up when Hu offered me some of the honey, and described how it is produced by bees that gather pollen from the flowers of Yunnan tea plants. He even showed me photos that his friend took after finding honeycombs inside a large, hollow log lying in the tall grass.

Jerry would have been as excited as I was by this organic equivalent of finding gold nuggets in a mountain stream.

I keep the honey in a fancy Chinese porcelain jar that I got at Hu's tea shop at the Silk Street Mall in Beijing. The jar itself is a reminder of the finer things in life, and the contents highlight how nature, too, provides us with some pretty impressive treasures.