Chapter 23: United Fruit

“Tut tut tut, you’re useless when given a chance, Master Great National Diviner.” Upon seeing that the prediction had truly come true, Apollonia sent a mocking message from the void. “You ignored your fortune before, and now that you ask again, you’ve lost all face.”

“How was I supposed to know it would happen so quickly? You’re way too accurate this time. How did it suddenly land a critical hit, directly hitting 2.7 million taels?”

“Blame me? Clearly, it’s your own distrust of me. And if I’d had any inkling, do you think I would have taken that hit? I already told you, interpreting the hexagram is more important than the hexagram itself. Let’s not blame each other, alright?”

“Master Shangluo,” Palka’s voice lowered as he noticed the man’s troubled expression, “Could you promise us? Could you save Chichen Itza? Save the Maya people? If you are truly too busy to guide us, could you at least pass a message to your master, to summon a great immortal to help us?”

“Hmm...” Shangluo pondered. The court surely knew about this. Restoring the Maya city-states would be a simple task for the empire, but the court turned a blind eye. There must be deeper reasons; he had no intention of intervening lightly.

Yet personally, he wanted to help the one who had treated him to an afternoon of creamy cocoa. After all, she had helped confirm Apollonia’s reliability—though Apollonia was perhaps too reliable.

The room was empty. The vast office had been completely cleared out; everything that could be used to cover debts had been taken away. The business at the Chichen Itza Grand Hotel had plummeted, and their days were grim.

“Let’s do this,” Shangluo raised his head. “I want to ask why the Maya have fallen like this. From my perspective, all seventeen Maya city-states going bankrupt simultaneously is a very strange matter. What caused all this?”

“Well... it’s not a long story. Master Shangluo, have you ever eaten a banana?”

“A banana? Yes, I have.”

“No, you haven’t.” Palka looked into his eyes. “To be precise, you have never eaten a ‘real’ banana. Don’t you find it strange that many banana-flavored drinks and snacks taste completely different from the bananas you eat?”

Shangluo thought for a moment and nodded.

He indeed felt that way. Banana-flavored chips, candies, sodas—they all tasted different from actual bananas.

“Why is that?”

“Because the ‘banana’ has long been extinct. Thirty-seven years ago, a sudden epidemic swept through the global banana plantations, and the banana groves in all seventeen Maya city-states withered within three months. Within a year, bananas worldwide were wiped out. Now, only a few genuine banana trees remain in the ‘rare fruit gardens’ of the Prince of Yanping in the South Seas, where they are strictly isolated to prevent contamination. The annual yield is very limited, mostly reserved as tributes and gifts.”

“Why did such a rapid global extinction happen? Bananas aren’t animals; they can’t run away.”

“Because bananas are different from other crops. The banana industry came about because of a coincidence—all bananas are actually clones of a single plant. This banana, called the ‘Big Mac banana,’ was discovered by a captain named Mac on a small Jamaican island. It is a rare triploid seedless banana—fleshy, sweet, and fragrant, but unable to reproduce naturally. Since then, the tropical world planted the ‘Big Mac banana,’ all propagated through asexual reproduction.”

“No wonder those banana-flavored snacks taste off—they’re not the real Big Mac banana flavor. Was the extinction of the Big Mac banana sudden?”

“Yes... it was incredibly sudden. Some say it started in Africa, others say the South Seas, some say the Maya. But that doesn’t matter anymore. That shock 37 years ago destroyed the global banana plantations, and for four whole years no banana entered the market.”

“But would just one failed season really cause you all to go bankrupt?” Shangluo still couldn’t understand why it led to ruin.

The Maya nurtured an ancient civilization, ideal for agriculture. The dense rainforest and synchronized rainy season created excellent conditions, and with modern farming, yields soared. It was hard to imagine the Maya collapsing entirely over the loss of a banana variety.

“Normally, it wouldn’t be possible. The warehouses in Chichen Itza were built for wartime—when resisting Spanish invaders, we could hold the fortress for years without leaving. But at that time, all Maya city-states participated in the United Fruit Company’s ‘New Dawn’ program. The company bought bananas at prices slightly above market rate, almost without limit.

“The Maya are excellent farmers. Within five years, we transformed nearly all lands into plantations, switching entirely to Big Mac bananas, increasing production fiftyfold. Yet the United Fruit Company was never satisfied; purchase prices rose instead of falling. Eventually, even the last hesitant growers joined banana cultivation...”

Palka fell into a meaningful pause. What followed was obvious. The swift extinction of the Big Mac banana caused an expected shockwave.

“And then you went bankrupt just like that?”

“At the time, I had just returned from studying at the Imperial Academy in Nanjing. I wanted to make a big impact, and commodity futures trading was a new concept. I believed futures trading could bring prosperity to agriculture, but it required high-quality bananas. So under my leadership, the Maya city-states and the South Seas’ Lan Fang Company formed United Fruit Company to coordinate banana production. Unexpectedly, United Fruit turned against us.

“After the banana extinction, we defaulted massively in the futures market, dragging insurance companies into bankruptcy. The Maya city-states fell into fiscal crisis and had to sell their sovereignty to repay debts. You should know, each Maya city-state was about the size of a county in the capital region; Chichen Itza was only slightly larger. Our scale simply couldn’t withstand such a historic shock, compounded by our large population. We had no choice but to sell sovereignty for aid, which prevented a greater catastrophe. Now we cultivate a different banana discovered years later, but things will never return to what they were.”

“Why didn’t you report this to the imperial court?”

“Are you joking? Even bankruptcy and selling sovereignty allowed us to maintain our statehood, and I remain the ruler of Chichen Itza. If such a heavy matter had reached the capital, it would have caused an upheaval. All seventeen city-states would have been stripped of their titles. Thankfully, it was all resolved peacefully. The people’s livelihoods remained as usual, and it never became a matter to alarm the emperor.”