Hard or Soft Taozi

I've been having a debate with my host mama although I'm not sure she 100% knows it. Every time she gives me a peach to eat, I gently push on the flesh to see how hard/soft it is. If it is too hard (I like ripe peaches) I hand it back and say, "wo bu yao!" (I don't want) she then shoves the peach back at me saying, "hao chi! Hao chi!" (Delicious, delicious!) I stare at her, shaking my head, and repeat, "wo bu yao!" Sometimes I knock it with my knuckles and give her the side-eye like, 'how could you give me this rock to break my teeth on?!?!' I've told her I didn't want it because it wasn't ripe, but in China, it's simply a piece of fruit. There is no real word for "ripe." This concept is foreign to her. If you have a piece of fruit, you eat it. There is no waiting period for ripeness to develop. Yet for me, eating a hard crunchy peach is sacrilegious.

I posed this question to my Site Manager, Chloe, a Chinese woman who has experience overseas and she laughed and told me that this is an actual debate online here in China: Which is better? Hard or soft peaches? 

Let that sink in for a moment. In China, there is a debate on whether peaches are better crisp or juicy... They say that crisp like an apple or sweet and juicy and soft are the two types of ripeness for the fruit. This is an actual ongoing debate/conversation, yet they have no real word to describe ripeness that is understood the way Americans do. It's a linguistic lacking in my humble opinion.

Here, the Taoist teachings say fruit has two parts like yin and yang. I spoke to my Language teacher and she explained that there is an ancient Chinese tradition that says that eating the skin AND the flesh provides a person with balance. In China, people peel almost all fruit because they believe this prevents them from injesting pesticides. You would not believe the conversations I've had about pesticides, antioxidants, and organic farming methods since I got here. Chinese people are fascinated by the concept of systemic fruit. I had to explain that even most Americans don't understand how fruit actually grows and that systemic fruit has pesticides throughout the flesh.  Throwing away the peel only prevents one from injesting the part of the fruit with the highest concentration of antioxidants and doesn't prevent one from injesting pesticides basically at all. 

But back to the soft versus hard debate, if I could use a peach as a hammer, I don't want to try and put it anywhere near my mouth. Period. Sometimes I get a beautiful and magical ripe peach, perfect in its soft and juicy glory. Those are happy days indeed. Even my closest friend here has gotten in on this and sends me messages every time he gets a decently ripe peach. Sometimes the pictures he sends with the messages are downright pornographic. This is how we entertain ourselves in China. We send each other well lit pictures of the juicy ripe fruit our Zhongguo mamas give us. It's a hard life... 

Let's talk about...watermelon

I don't know about you, but I love watermelon. I'm not talking that, "oh, yeah, watermelon is a nice treat in the hot summer months at bbqs and evening soirées," type of love. I'm talking, when my parents know I'm coming to visit me, they buy a watermelon as a present for me. My dad brings me watermelon when he comes to my house to help me work on leaky pipes or electrical problems. My mother buys me watermelon juice from Costco because I like it even more than coconut water. This love goes deep.

My ex boyfriend once asked me what the strangest thing I ever got grounded from was. His was garlic bread, so the first time I made him dinner, guess what I made him? Pasta and garlic bread of course! My strangest grounding was from watermelon. Instead of throwing all my watermelon rinds in the compost heap, after consuming half and throwing those rinds in the compost, I threw the other half of them that I wasn't able to self-control myself from demolishing, in the trash. I wasn't allowed watermelon in my parent's house for years. Those were the worst years of my life! I tried to sneak it in to no avail. Finally, after some coaxing and prodding, "but I'm in my twenties now!" My mother submitted and on a visit to my parent's house on my birthday, I found myself face to face with my very own, personal sized, watermelon. It was the best day of my life.

I bet you are wondering why I'm even mentioning this love of watermelon in a blog dedicated to my Peace Corps service in China. Well, the answer is simple...I got placed here for a reason. The fates intervened and kept me from Moldovan Business Advisor status for a very distinct and specific reason...watermelon. Every single day here it is like a watermelon festival. There is fresh, cold, crisp, juicy watermelon on every street. The kind of watermelon that is sweet all the way to the rind and it dribbles down your chin at every bite. The juicy and crunchy kind of watermelon with seeds, so you don't get too full of yourself while eating it and always have to be careful so you don't get that annoying, "crack," when you bite down on a black seed. This watermelon is so good, that when I was very sick last week with a sore throat and sneezing, all I ate was watermelon. It's so good that when you go to a restaurant or something and they serve you an old, room temperature piece of watermelon, you look at the waiter like he just killed a kitten right in fronting you. This watermelon has spoiled me. It's made me invincible while I'm eating it. I could pluck bullets out of thin air just because of the super powers this delicious summer treat gives me.

I arrived here nearly two months ago, in June. It was already stiflingly hot. In two or three months, I'm sure the fruit stands will be filled with apples, pears, and beautiful autumn squashes. I learned recently on a trip to Wangcong Shrine, that the greatest Sichuan kings worked with the people to focus on crop rotation and using seasonal fruit and vegetable growing methods to avoid famine, which are still used today. This can only mean one thing, my watermelon will be disappearing soon. It will go the way of grapes and ramps, disappearing as the hot rainy season gives way to cold humidity. I can only hope that next year brings as sweet and lovely a crop of my favorite food.