Fruit in China: Tips on Identifying and Buying the Best Fruit

Fruit in China: Tips on Identifying and Buying the Best Fruit
Jun 30, 2014 By Benjamin Burley , eChinacities.com

Summer in China is once again here. You may enjoy the Chinese summers, or conversely find them too hot to handle. Regardless, a guide to buying fruit in China in the summer will undoubtedly make your summer that bit more delightful. This article provides tips on when best to eat some of China’s most popular fruit, how to keep them and what health properties they bring. So, digest the below tips and gain the all-knowing wisdom of a fruit connoisseur. 

Watermelon
Photo: Harsha KR

1) Watermelon
A cool watermelon is perhaps the favorite fruit for devouring in the hot summer months, the time it is most readily available and most efficacious.

• When looking at the little dried out circle at the bottom of the watermelon, smaller is good while bigger is dud.

• Go for a turquoise green color rather than the faded green color of not-so-sweet watermelons.

• Of two watermelons of the same size the lighter is usually the better, whereas the heavier is not quite optimally ripe.

• When tapping the watermelon you are listening for a full resonant plonking sound and feeling for slight vibrations in your hand.

• The more ‘orderly’ the dark green lines streaking across the watermelon, the better.

• Pay attention to the stalk ends on the head of the watermelon, cute and curly signals sweet and juicy.

• While favored for its detoxifying and all round positive effects on the body’s waste removal system, watermelon should not be eaten within a couple of hours after lunch as its juice will have a diluting effect on the body’s natural digestive juices.

Dragon Fruit
Photo: John Loo

2) Dragon Fruit
This eye-hooking fiery purple fruit grows from April through to November and is relatively low calorie, highly fibrous and packed with nutrition.

• Weigh the fruit in your hands, the heavier and denser, the juicer and more abundant the pulp.

• Look for full bright colors, the brighter the red and the more vibrant the green, the fresher the fruit. More expensive and higher quality yellow and purple pulp dragon fruit varieties can also be found.

• As for the magical health benefits of dragon fruit, it is said to help flush out toxins and protect the gastric lining of the stomach, aid you in weight loss efforts, lubricate the intestines, even slow the effect of aging and prevent cancers of the large intestine! 

3) Strawberries
Another summer fruit that now, thanks to greenhouses and poly tunnels, are available all year round. However, the natural and best time for strawberries is around May.

• Don’t be gluttonous and go for the big red beauties that sink into your sights, smaller is actually better, too red is actually a bad sign, and those that still have some white wash to their red flush will behave the best in your mouth.

• Due to high vitamin C, B1, B2, carotene and riboflavin contents, strawberries help brain cells maintain a healthy structure. In addition strawberries have a cleansing effect on the blood, a suppling effect on the skin and are great for weight loss.

4) Kiwi
Ripening around October, these fruits are considered the ‘vitamin C king’. 

• When choosing look for a kiwi that has a more peaked-off head, like a chicken’s beak. Those that are flatter, like a ducks bill, are strong candidates for previous hormone tampering.

• A soft, earthy yellow color is proof of greater sun exposure and therefore a ripe and ready to eat kiwi. Meanwhile, an ideal base/stem section of the fruit is a more verdant green.

• Check for the same level of firmness all over the fruit, anything softer in some areas may have been damaged in transition or has possibly begun to over-ripen.

• When you get it home follow this simple, clean method to get the most fruit from your kiwi. Slice off both ends then take a spoon, insert and scoop round the inner side of the skin. You now have a nice chunk of pure kiwi ready to enjoy.

• Like a host of fruits, kiwis are kind to your digestive and urinal systems. However, kiwis have other benefits; beautifying effects, easing urinal stones, restoring endocrine imbalance, and easing back pain. 

5) Cherries
Usually appearing around May/June time, cherries are a little costly but a sweet treat.

• Firstly, check the stalks. Those with dried out shriveled looking or even blackening stalks have been out in the sun to long and won’t be as succulent.

• As with other fruits, any signs of wrinkling shows the cherry was picked long ago and has already begun to lose some of its ripeness.

• When you get your cherries home, pick out the stalks, take a chopstick and with the blunt end gently push from this point all the way through the middle of the cherry to remove the pip. Now give them a quick wash and voila.

• These little gems are expensive, but if they do what is claimed, that is prevent colds and more importantly cancer they are worth every penny.

• Cherries are said to have a qi balancing effect, relieve rheumatic pains, help with chilblains, shortness of breath, stiffness in the joints, and loss of appetite. 

Hami Melon
Photo: John Loo

6) Hami Melon
Ready for harvesting from late June to August, these fruits are popular in Xinjiang Province.

• The most obvious sign to guide your choice is a cobwebbing pattern that is rather pronounced, thick and dense; this indicates a good, thick skin housing good, sweet fruit.

• Hami melons are supposed to help with a list of ailments, including bad breath, fatigue, passing water and sunstroke. In addition, research has shown hami melons to be effective emetics; so for bouts of food poisoning hami melons are great to get you vomiting up the bad stuff!

7) Pawpaw
These melons tend to naturally ripen around September time, and have a higher vitamin A and C content than both bananas and watermelons.

• This rather enriching fruit can actually be identified as either male or female, the females selection having larger stomachs.

• When picking your pawpaw you want to go for those with full mid sections, small spots dotted all over the surface and a just-begun-turning shade of yellow.

• If you find a tiny patch of sticky gelatin like liquid on the skin of your pawpaw (glycine), not to worry, it indicates that the fruit is ready for devouring.

• The pawpaw is certainly a fruit for those into beauty, as it is said to relieve spots and dark blotches, freckles (not classically liked by the Chinese), cure ulceration and aid better digestion. 

Mangosteen
Photo: Toshiyuki IMAI

8) Mangosteen
This tropical fruit takes up to 10 years to fruit once planted. Each year, it appears around June time, and much like durians is considered ‘the queen of fruit’.

• When picking mangosteens remember this: the number of petal-like sections on the bottom is equal to the number of pieces of fruit inside; 7-8 is the golden number.

• Go for a mangosteen whose stalk still holds freshness in its color and whose outer shell is not completely hardened but slightly soft to the touch.

• In some areas the mangosteen and the durian are considered the husband and wife of fruits as they have opposite and complimentary effects on the body, the later producing heat in the body leading to spots, skin marks and stomach discomfort, while the former tampers this reaction.

9) Durian
Available all year round but best for eating in June and July, this so called ‘king of fruits’ looks intriguing but smells repulsive.

• There are several tricks here. Firstly, check for a satisfying sound when lightly shaking your durian; Secondly, go for a durian that has naturally begun to split open; Thirdly, make sure it has a strong thick smell. Lastly, access its size and weight, bigger with more bulges shows more fruit while small but heavy could indicate an overly large stone in the center. Often a good durian is around 1.5-2.5 kilograms.

• Durians are in no way inviting to your senses, but they remain popular because they are the elixir of the fruit world. Among their benefits to the body are; nourishing and strengthening of the kidneys and the spleen, invigoration of the body, boosting nourishment post childbirth or disease, and funnily enough for a fruit so repulsive it is said to act as aphrodisiac of sorts, boosting the male prowess in more than a few ways. 

10) Mango
Coming into its natural season around July, the mango is rich in vitamin A and B to an extent even higher than oranges and strawberries.

• Go for a mango that is not too hard or too soft, but has a full yellow color.

• You can smell fresh mangoes from a distance away, and you can tell if a mango is over ripe when is begins to show small dark spots and the skin wrinkles slightly.

• I find this to be the most efficient method for preparing a mango (in terms of leaving my hands fairly clean and not causing the mango to slip to the ground). Firstly hold the mango upright and slice downwards on both sides of where the husk should be, leaving you with three pieces. Secondly, take the two larger pieces and gently scour the fruit in a crosshatch manner. Now with a little push from behind invert the mango to give you a little mango-hedgehog you can eat square by square.   

• It’s not recommended for you to munch messily on your mango as it will likely leave a nice red halo around your lips due to its acidity level.

• Mango is an all round good fruit with many benefits; including ameliorating travel sickness, preventing nausea, helping heal scolds and burns, acting as a painkiller and an anti-inflammatory, helping combat colds, excess mucus, cardiovascular disease and asthma.

Above is only a glance into a trove of tips and teachings compiled over generations on buying and eating fruit in China. Whether or not you find them to be effective in the aforementioned way is, for me not the central point. Rather, with a cacophony of traditional advice and knowledge behind you, you might find fruit shopping to be all that more meaningful and rewarding.   

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Keywords: fruit in China summer in China

4 Comments

All comments are subject to moderation by eChinacities.com staff. Because we wish to encourage healthy and productive dialogue we ask that all comments remain polite, free of profanity or name calling, and relevant to the original post and subsequent discussion. Comments will not be deleted because of the viewpoints they express, only if the mode of expression itself is inappropriate.

bansufan

Now I want to go buy some fruit and feel more confident I will get nice ripe fruit when I buy it. Thanks.

Jul 01, 2014 21:17 Report Abuse

xxxcdbxxx

well-written and informative article

Jun 30, 2014 12:54 Report Abuse

sharkies

Lol...true

Jun 30, 2014 09:22 Report Abuse

carlstar

kiwi is a bird. the fine for eating one is quite a lot as well as prison time. Try the fruit instead

Jun 30, 2014 00:12 Report Abuse