Cal's Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele Has a Sweet Time in Chinatown

The bye week wasn’t all work and no play for freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele and five of his Cal teammates.

On a free day during the extended break between games, Sagapolutele, along with defensive linemen Stanley Saole-McKenzie and Tyson Ford, offensive linemen Sioape Vatikani and Tyson Ruffins, and defensive back Aiden Manutai trekked across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco for a visit to Chinatown.

Sagapoulotele, who grew up in Hawaii, had a great time as a tourist in the city.

“That was pretty cool to go experience that for a bit, just enjoy it and get outside of Berkeley. Live life,” he said. “It was just a great reset for us, enjoy each other’s time. hanging out. It was really a good time for us, just a blessing.”

Sagapolutele said the players didn’t sit down in a restaurant for a big Chinese dinner, but instead tasted different items while touring the neighborhood.

“We kind of just ate at those little shops they had . . . we just tried all those little vendors,” he said. “Pretty much we got full off of that so that was our dinner.”

Even an informal dinner needs a dessert. Asked if he tried anything new and fun, Sagapolutele attempted to describe a treat that sounded somewhat similar to American cotton candy.

“It was like this hairy candy or something. Or furry candy or sticky candy,” he said. “It was like white (and) hairy . . . some sweet candy inside. It was pretty nice.”

Almost certainly the Bears enjoyed what is known as dragon’s beard candy, whose ingredients include sugar, peanuts and coconut.

There are variations of the candy known as pashmak (Iran), kkiltarae (Korea), pismaniye (Turkey) and sohan papdi (India).

According to several references, dragon beard’s candy originated in China during the Han Dynasty, sometime around 200 BC.

Fast forward a couple centuries to this week, and the Bears (4-2, 1-1 ACC) are preparing to face North Carolina (2-3, 0-1) in an ACC game on Friday night at Memorial Stadium. Both teams had byes last weekend after losing the week before.

Cal has won the only two previous matchups in the series, starting with a 24-17 victory at Chapel Hill, NC, in 2017 in coach Justin Wilcox’s debut game.

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