long johns, citrus fruits, and other random things

Putting on my long johns in November was acceptable. December was logical. January was appropriate. February was expected. Putting on two pairs at once in March was a little less than thrilling, but I could deal. But come on now, putting on long johns in the second half of April?! This is truly getting ridiculous…

 

The Chinese concept of “late” and “early” is a bit different than most of us Westerners. True enough, at least a few of the Chinese authorities understand that to a small extent. We in the foreign student building don’t have a 10:30 curfew like the Chinese dorms. Ours is 11:00.

 

What really surprised me, though, was the day I was walking away from campus at 6:45 p.m. I happened to run into a Chinese girl I know, who also lives at my school, and so we smiled and greeted each other. But to my surprise, she then – very animatedly – told me, “Be careful! What are you doing going out so late?!” Really? 6:45 is late? Wow. If those Chinese students only knew how active the foreign student building is at night…

 

One of the more entertaining moments in my Chinese class recently was when we were talking about the possibility of repeated names. In the U.S., repeated first names are quite common, but to meet someone with the exact same name, first, middle, and last, is not so common. In China, however, there are a lot more people and a lot fewer names, which leads to a lot more people with identical names. Here was the sentence from our text (in translated form, of course): “Even if you name your child ‘Big Cow,’ you’re still bound to run into people with the same name.” Wow, that’s really unfortunate! 

 

Growing up I always thought there were four kinds of citrus fruits: oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruits. Turns out there are whole lot more than that. (Of course, I know about tangerines, clementines, pomelos, and the like. But there are a lot more than that, too!) My newest discovery of a citrus fruit involved a little orange thing that looks almost identical to a grape tomato (except orange, not red). I had seen a lot of Chinese people buy bags of these little guys, so I thought I should try my hand at it as well. Next stop at the fruit stand, and I bought myself some little orange grape tomato things.

 

Having never seen anyone actually eat one of these before (only seeing people carry them home to eat there), I got home myself and just assumed I could figure out what to do. I mean really, it’s a citrus fruit. How hard can it be? So I washed a couple, grabbed my garbage can, and started peeling. Uh-oh. Why won’t the peel come off? I very awkwardly peeled off this peel that was hardly different than the fruit itself, and then popped what I considered must be the fruit into my mouth.

 

Turned out to be mostly seeds. Yikes. The flavour was good, but it was the messiest little citrus fruit I’ve ever tried eating. And the inside had so many seeds, there was hardly any fruit to eat! (Think about it, the size of a grape tomato, with about 6~8 seeds the size of regular orange seeds. That doesn’t leave much room.) A little disappointed, I went ahead to try another one… maybe the first was just a fluke.

 

Nope. Just as messy and just as little fruit. Darn it.

 

That happened to be right before I was having a bunch of people over for lunch, so I decided to put them out and see if anyone else knew how to eat them. Given how many Chinese I’ve seen buying whole bunches of this little fruit, I figured I must be doing something inefficiently. There must be a better way to eat this fruit.

 

Well, none of the foreigners who came that day had any idea either. So those little fruits sat on my table for a few days, got moldy, and I threw them away disappointedly. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

 

A couple weeks later, I invited a Chinese girl to come to my room for something. In good Chinese fashion, she brought me a gift… You guessed it, these little orange grape tomato fruits.  Unfortunately, she didn’t stay long enough for me to offer her some and then study how she ate them! Alas, my only potential teacher left and I was there alone with these fruits who had already conquered me once.

 

But fear not! My trusty American friend came over the next day. To my great surprise, of all the people in Shenyang (including those 8 million Chinese ones), the only person who could actually teach me to each these little guys was an American! She walked into my room, saw the fruits on my table, and was excited because she likes them. I admitted the whole story to her, and she laughed hysterically. I decided to laugh too, because I figured it was better for her to laugh with me than at me. But finally, she admitted of her own adventures in learning to eat this fruit, and she gave me a good orange grape tomato fruit eating lesson.

 

In case any of you ever have opportunity to try one of these strange little orange grape tomato fruits, let me give you a brief lesson. I wouldn’t want you to be conquered by them the way I was. It’s pretty humiliating for a fruit to outsmart you. So here’s what you do: Grab one of those little guys, and wash it nice and good. (Don’t you love my English abilities these days?) Then just bite it! Peel and all, just eat it! (Spit out the seeds, of course.)

 

I had no idea there were citrus fruits that are just eaten with the entire peel, but apparently there are. And they’ll get you if you don’t know that.

 

I also had no idea those little guys were worth so much space on my blog…