it’s yangmei season in ningbo | ningbo photographer

one thing i have enjoyed here is eating fruit.  fruits here are generally really good.  sweet, juicy, yum.  back in michigan, i rarely ate apples… and isn’t michigan supposed to be known for their apples?  but here, i eat apples *all the time* because they just taste better.  some of my old roomies would be proud of me, hearing that now i eat fruit everyday, multiple times a day even… considering i used to be known as a lazy fruit eater.  would only eat them on occasion, and only if they were cut and peeled for me, and tasted good.  maybe this pregnancy also has something to do with my increased fruit consumption…

anyways, i digress.

last week, a local friend told me about a fruit called “yangmei” or 杨梅.  according to wikipedia, it could be translated as Chinese bayberry.  i had never heard of it before, and my friend did not think it’s available in the US.  apparently, it is special to this region of China, and when it is yangmei season, it’s a *huge* deal here, and people go crazy over them and have like a festival or something.  to heighten the hype, this yangmei season only lasts a couple weeks… which happens to be right now!  then you have to wait until next year to get them.  hearing all this, i was really curious to try this new fruit.  
fortunately, a couple days after i first heard about them, another friend brought some yangmei to a gathering and i got to try it for the first time.  and this past weekend, we went to the market to get some for ourselves.  now that i know what they are, i notice them in all the markets and on street carts.  and i hear of people organizing outings to go yangmei-picking.  here’s what they look like:

they are large, sweet berries with some tanginess to it.  and rather photogenic.  but i guess you’ll just have to pay us a visit if you want to experience first hand what these fruits are like.  =)

the tradeoff to having good fruit here, is that usually they are only available when they are in season.  so while we were in the US, we missed strawberry season, and will have to wait until next year to eat strawberries.  =(  luckily, i got my fill while we were in the US.