Xin nian kuai le!
(Title translates as ‘Happy New Year’ – New year apples: Suzhou, China)
During this photography spree, an assistant who made it very clear that cameras are not permitted in supermarkets interrupted me. That fact has never stopped me before, Ying usually slopes off to a safe distance to give me more credibility as a foolish foreigner (as if I needed any more) and to watch drama unfold at a distance. However, before I was stopped, I got the shots I wanted you to see. Now I realise the last time I saw this type of patterning on fruit, it must have been for the Mid Autumn festival, though I didn’t notice the correlation at the time (http://china.analoguegirl.co.uk/happy-apples/). These ones are undeniably much better quality though, and fantastically pricey! Have a guess before you read on.
The ones on the left aren’t so expensive, a mere 198 RMB (£18.50) a swatch – however if you’d like a smarter set of three in a box, it’ll set you back a cool 598 RMB (£55). These I could imagine forking out for if it was paramount to an events success. I suppose the equivalent to me might be some fancy Christmas décor? Now for the piece de resistance, the apple depicting Buddha on the right hand side has a price sticker reading 8800 RMB, which translates to about £820 in British pounds sterling. I could not disguise my complete shock and this is probably why I was accosted. At this point I should like to remind you that although vastly oversized to an impressive degree, these apples are still just apples and will rot in a couple of weeks like any other. Unless of course there are properties of this fruit of which I am not aware.
Hopefully I will have a chance to update this over the weekend, but tonight Ying and I make an escape from China to Singapore. I’m looking forward to it immensely, the only drawback being the fact that fireworks are regrettably banned there. There will be none for Chinese New Year, they are only used to celebrate National events by the government, but not for religious or cultural festivals. This wounded me especially deep as I missed out on my annual British fireworks fix on Bonfire Night last November. However, I imagine the joy of novelty and warmer climes will completely eclipse this disappointment and I will hardly even notice their absence.
Wow. I knew that apple growers were looking at applying stickers with the same intent of marking apples by restricting photosynthesis on certain areas, and thought that it was only for the purpose of growing them complete with an all natural barcode. I can’t see them being able to get a similar mark-up on a simple barcode tho’! Any ideas for trialling in the orchard next season?
PS Brilliant calendars – Huge thanks.