Oranges... Mandarins... Orange you confused?

I read something recently but can't for the life of me remember where I read it. Well anyway the reasons that oranges, mandarins, and kumquats are passed around and given around Chinese New Year time is because Mandarin Orange 柑 - the name of the fruit is phonetically similar to gold -- jin ju (金橘子) in Mandarin or kam (金) in Cantonese. Another explanation is that the Mandarin word for mandarin oranges is ju (橘), which sounds like ji (吉) (ji xiang 吉 祥) meaning good luck.

From
http://www.nwchineseculturalassociation.org/cny.htm
and here
http://purple2001tulips.blogspot.com/2008/02/chinese-new-year-is-coming.html

Anyway, for those that don't know my distant relatives live in the same building as us just a couple of floors below, and we also share the same ayi. Every night bar one since I got back from Taiwan I've been eating dinner in their house. And every night my great aunt says to me, "Take some mandarins...". I did this reluctantly just to be polite. As mentioned before I don't have a big interest in food so I just took them out of politeness.

I had nowhere to put them or hold them so she started putting them in my jacket pocket. It was quite funny to see my pockets stuffed with them but I must've forgotten about them because the next night when I went down there for dinner again and she said again, "Take some mandarins..." I grabbed a bunch (these mandarins are tiny - about the size of a ping pong ball, btw) and I was about to put them into my pocket when I realised my pockets were already full!

Not knowing what to do (and feeling a little foolish and embarrassed!) I quickly said, "Oh I still have lots at home I haven't eaten yet..." and quickly changed the topic. Well the 'at home' part wasn't exactly the truth, but the 'haven't eaten part' was true!

So of course as soon as I got home I quickly took them out of my pocket and put them in the fruit bowl on the dining table. Then, of course I had to try one. I am not sure how common these mandarins are in China but in Australia they don't really exist. They are tiny! So I went to the kitchen and started peeling it and popped the entire thing in my mouth. Oh. My. God. It was so sweet and delicious. It was so amazingly sweet and juicy (and I normally don't like citrus fruits at all...) It was heavenly. I quickly then ate another two. And more. And soon they were all gone. Yep, all of them.

The third night when I went down for dinner I didn't wait for her to ask me.. I asked her if I could take some (more)! Ha!

PS When I was younger and people asked if I spoke Mandarin I would be a smartarse and answer, "No, but I speak Orange" and they'd look and me funny and some people would wonder if Orange actually was a language! Oh dear... :)

Hayfever and Pomelos

There are so many things I could write about now, all overdue of course, but I'll just write about today for now. Over the last two weeks or so the weather has changed dramatically. Gone are the blissfully warm yet comfortable temps that were to be had in late September and the first week of October (the week long public holiday). Although it is still sunny during the day the air is now cool and dry. Very dry.

My and my husband's hayfever have come back with a vengeance! In Australia many many people suffer from hayfever and I suffered from it quite badly, having it year round, some days worst than others. Whilst I was in China (and heck I noticed this whenever I was in ANY other country apart from Australia) my hayfever did not exist. At all. I put this down to the extremely dry climate in Australia coupled with too many allergenic plants, grasses, flowers, etc.

So, it is quite a rude and unfortunate shock that I find myself suffering from this horrible thing once again - red, itchy eyes, itchy palate (roof of inside of mouth), watery runny nose, sneezing, even headaches. It's just yuck and makes me feel like I have a cold, which of course I don't. It's not so bad inside our house where I haven't used the air-con but with indoor heating it seems to be particularly bad as it's so dry inside.

Anyway, this morning I was talking to my ayi and she said she had itchy eyes and a friend of my great aunt (who she also works for) had similar symptoms and to relieve them, I was supposed to get some kind of special fruit and rub it all over my face, particularly my nose. So away she went to the market across the road, and came back with a fruit I had never seen before. It was green and had the smell of a lemon. The skin was extremely thick, soft and spongy and bright white, while the flesh looked like grapefruit, heck it even tasted like grapefruit except much blander, and sweeter and not at all bitter. (the pic above does not give you an idea of how big it is though - it is roughly the size of a small coconut). In Chinese it is called yòuzi (柚子).

I laughed and dismissed this crazy Chinese idea but she kept forcing me to do it. She ripped apart the skin of this (what I later found out was a) pomelo and gave me a piece the size of a business card and forced me to rub it all over my face. Actually, after a while it did feel quite soothing and the smell was really nice and not at all overpowering. It was probably a good exfoliant for my face too! (haha).

I am used to weird Chinese medicial and health related 'ideas' so I was not shocked by this but I found the whole idea rather amusing!