Month: March 2018

Ever visit the grocery store and find some weird fruit that you don’t know what it’s called, how to tell if it’s ripe, or what it might taste like? Add those three concerns together without being able to read the label on the shelf and BAM! You get 红肉火龙果 (Hóng ròu huǒlóng guǒ) or Red Dragon Fruit sitting in your shopping cart.

Dragon fruit, also known as pitaya, is the flowering fruit of cacti and originated in the Americas. Why it’s more popular in Asian countries and not in the good ole USA I have no clue, especially since this fruit is delicious, having a water content similar to watermelon, edible black seeds, and just a hint of sweetness. In a blender, this fruit would be a great addition for a smoothy any time day or night.

While I’m not sure how edible the outside skin of the dragon fruit is, cutting the fruit into pieces is easy to do with a sharp knife. Place it on its side and cut off the small “tips”. Cut the large body of the fruit in half and you’ll see the delicious “meat” of the fruit.

Turn those flat ends upside-down and cut each half along the its width producing four equally sized quarters. For each quarter, take the blade of the knife and slide it along the inside of the fruit between the meat and the skin. The blade should move quickly and without resistance through the fruit. Cut the fruit into pieces and enjoy right away or within the next couple of days.

I’ve seen this fruit in almost every grocery store or fruit stand in Suzhou and it seems to be available year round. Next time I’ll be looking for the white variety, which might be called 白肉火龙果(Báiròu huǒlóng guǒ); I’ve eaten it before and it is just a delicious!

Typically in most places where I’ve lived or traveled there is an inherent lack of trust in strangers. For example, you’d normally lock the doors to your home and you’d normally not leave your cellphone on a table at a coffee shop when getting another cup of joe. If you did, you’d be shopping for a new cellphone and probably having to replace some valuable household goods.

This week there were a few early morning meetings I needed to be in the office for as taking those meetings from home just wasn’t possible. I avoid leaving for the office before 9am as traffic is heavier causing the bus to be slower and typically the busses (and subway) are terribly crowded.

In Suzhou when you ride the bus you are only supposed to enter through the front door and exit through the back, mainly to more efficiently allow for the flow of entering and exiting passengers. Also, you pay for your bus ride with a device near the driver or drop a 1元 coin in the slot. (Some months the bus ride is 2元, usually during the winter and summer months.) There are times when the bus is so tightly packed with people that rule gets ignored and it turns into a free-for-all scramble.

What is amazing is the level of trust that occurs during these free-for-all moments. People who enter through the back doors are trusted by the driver to pay for their ride. The passengers trust their fellow bus riders by passing their transit cards, coins, and even cellphones up to the front to be scanned and pay for their rides. The passengers trust the bus driver to safely navigate the often crowded roads and not to make sudden stops or get into accidents. Oh yeah, the bus riders who passed up their transit cards and cellphones also trust in this ad-hoc system to re-obtain their cards and phones.

It’s pretty amazing to be honest. Could you imagine something like this happening in New York, LA, Philly or Miami? … possibly in Seattle or Portland, but yeah, crazy!