Western Red Persimmon or Foreign Eggplant?

The other night, my father-in-law mentioned that in Chinese a tomato is a "fān qié" which means "foreign eggplant". Finding this very interesting, I mentioned it in a class with two Chinese speakers.  The Cantonese speaker agreed, but the Mandarin speaker disagreed calling it "xī hóng shì" which means "western red persimmon". 

Hmmm.... I was very confused since I know that my wife's family is Mandarin speaking.  It turns out that this is a difference in mainland China vs. the more western-influenced Taiwanese Chinese.

What is a tomato to me is a foreign eggplant in Taiwan and is a western red persimmon in mainland China. 

But, it's all good, because the original word in the New World meant "wolf peach" anyway...
(if you want to learn where we got our word tomato from, refer to my old post about turkeys)