When I was a kid growing up I hated asparagus. We had it growing in our garden and my mom would make it steamed about once a week and force everyone to eat it. It wasn't until I started to like dipping it in horseradish that it became edible. While it's ok in limited portions these days, asparagus will not show up on my plate unless it's  a free side at a restaurant that I don't know about.

So, I don't know that they were thinking when they decided to squeeze the juice out of (what seems like) a very un-juicy vegetable to make asparagus juice. But it's China, the land of peanut juice and corn juice, not to mention Jew's ear juice, so what can I say?

The asparagus juice (芦笋汁 lu2 sun3 zhi1) came in a juicebox probably to deliberately obscure the sight of what I thought was going to be a nasty green liquid. It turned out completely unexpectedly that it's clear juice.

And actually it doesn't taste that bad!

It strangely reminds me of Capri Sun and honeysuckle juice, finished off with asparagus. It doesn't even have a bad aftertaste like normal asparagus does. It's kindof refreshing, but not really. The thing is, which I found out after reading the label, it's mostly sugar water, with only 10% real asparagus juice. If you drink it quickly, you can't even taste the asparagus at all.

On my trip to Hong Kong, I picked up another weird drink that I had never seen before in a 7-11. Beside the fact that I didn't recognize the name 夏枯草, I could tell it was weird because of the drink's tagline: "Common selfheal fruit-spike drink."  That doesn't give me any clue as to what's in it.

It tastes basically like raisin juice, but really a mild flavor. It's not sour or bitter at all, and not even too sweet. It just has a little raisin-y aftertaste, and is pretty refreshing cold. I think you could also drink it hot, like the jew's ear juice, and it might taste good that way too.

Checking my trusty Chinese translator, nciku.com, it seems I've never heard of this fruit before either. It's xia1 ku1 cao3 in Mandarin, ha6 fu1 chou2 in Cantonese, Prunella vulgaris in Latin, and "Self-heal" in English. Also known as Lance Selfheal in the US, it's a flowery plant that's harvested for it's medicinal properties. It supposedly can help to heal a whole bunch of diseases, and is being researched for cancer, AIDS, and diabetes treatments.

Getting to the label, here are the ingredients: purified water, cane sugar, common selfheal fruit-spike, dates, grosvenor momordica fruit, and liquorice root. If you're wondering what the second-to-last ingredient is, it's luo han guo, which is probably why this tastes a little similar to the luo han guo juice I tried in Thailand.

The xia ku cao juice has no preservatives or artificial colorings, and based on the ingredients it sounds like it's really good for you. It tastes good too.

According to Wikipedia, other names for this weird fruit are arhat fruit, monk's fruit, la han qua, and even a longevity fruit. It's used in Chinese medicine, mainly as a sweetener and is even used to create a sugar substitute because it is so sweet. But is also said to help with some illnesses such as heat stroke, larynx infection, cough, and diabetes. I can't vouch for any of these "cures," all I can say is that the juice does taste pretty good.

This Thai drink is sweet like a plum or a date, and reminds me of the flavor of sno-cones when I was a kid. It's an artificial flavor, so of course it's not dead on to what the fruit tastes like, but I can see how you could imagine that it tastes like longan.

While I'm a little disappointed at the flavor, it's not bad for artificial fruit juice.

I tried this palm sugar juice at Samyan Market in Bangkok, Thailand. At the time I'd never heard of palm sugar juice before, I guess it comes from a palm tree, like a coconut or date tree. I'm still not too sure actually.

It tastes similar to regular sugar cane juice, but not as "fresh" or "green." it has a slight hint of coconut water taste, which makes me think it could be made from coconuts or something like coconut. It's very refreshing and also very sweet. It's light brown in color, which is a little more appealing than the neon green of the regular sugar cane juice.

I think that if you can get this palm sugar juice, go ahead and get it, but it's not much better than the regular sugar cane juice, for about the same price.

It only has 3 ingredients: water, black currant juice (from concentrate), and fructose. But it's only 22% juice. How can that be? I'm not sure, maybe that means it's only 22% concentrate, with the water as the majority of the other 78%. If you know how they calculate the percentage of juice, please leave a comment. Regardless, this leads me to imagine that straight-up black currant juice is probably either bitter or sour - which is why cranberry juice is usually sold as a juice blend. The water and sugar really easily cut that though if it's the case, because it's actually very good.

Black currant is a small black fruit very high in antioxidants and vitamins, including Vitamin C. It has four times the Vitamin C of oranges, and twice as many antioxidants as blueberries. I think that qualifies it as a superfruit. It comes from Europe, and is working on making a comeback in the United States where it was banned in the past because of a threat to the logging industry. It is still banned in some states.

The black currant juice I tried was made by Currant Affair. You can visit their website at www.ConnecticutCurrant.com

Overall, a very good and refreshing acai juice blend. One of the best I've tasted.

This corn juice was being sold in 500g bottles as well as 2-liter bottles, and it looked like there was only one flavor option: corn.  The foil cap on the small bottle I bought was extremely hard to open. I tried peeling at first, but it seems like it was made for  a straw. With no straw in sight, I had to stab it with a pen a couple times to get it to open up.

So, the long and short of it is: this tastes like cold creamed corn soup, without the chunks. It's very thick for a drink, and pretty sweet. If you like corn, you would probably like it. It really does taste like corn, with not much else added. There's no aftertaste, and even though it's not really refreshing or especially tasty in my opinion, it's not unpleasant in any way.

The label says it's organic, and the ingredients are pretty simple: water, "fresh glutinous sweet corn juice," and 木糖 (mù táng). The last ingredient directly translates as wood sugar, but I'm not sure exactly what it is; the scientific name is xylose.

I'm not sure exactly what vitamins this brand has, but another brand of corn juice says that it has vitamin A, vitamin C, folic acid, magnesium, iron, fiber, and protein. The other brand, which is being positioned as a "fashion" or "beauty" drink, is only 25% sweet corn juice.

It says on the bottle that this blood orange juice is made from blood oranges from Mt. Etna Volcano in Sicily, Italy. It's imported into the US and registered USDA 100% Organic. It's not from concentrate and it's high in Vitamin C and antioxidants as most citrus fruits are. The best part about this brand is that it's 100% organic blood orange juice, so you know it's fresh and healthy.

Get blood orange juice here:

Volcano, Juice Blood Orange, 25.3-Fluid Ounce (6 Pack)