jiuzi in season

You buy what is in season here. That’s how you get your fruit. You may remember this summer I got a little sick of taozi (peaches) and xigua (watermelon), but that was the time and they were the fruit. Now it is pretty obvious it is jiuzi (oranges). They are all over the place, filling the front row of fruit stands and being carried around by those vendors who attach two huge bushels to a stick and carry as much fruit as possible on their persons as they wander the streets. Actually, they are not quite oranges but somewhere in between oranges and tangerines. And while you can still get more variety of fruits and vegetables at the grocery stores, the local mom and pop produce sellers are the way to go to find what is fresh. So I go to the little place that is just around the corner from the building where I live. I am a pretty steady customer there for xiangjiao (bananas) and pinguo (apples). But for both of these fruits you only have to tell the guy how many of the fruits you want, and you can even use your fingers to explain. With oranges and similar fruits it is a little more work because you have to ask how much the basic unit costs and then go from that. The basic unit is a ‘jin," which if I am right is slightly more than one pound. So you ask "Shifu, Jiuzi, duo shao qian yi jin?" or "how much per basic unit are those oranges my good man." The rate is yi kuai ar, or about fifteen cents a pound, so I ask for a couple of jin, which is probably more oranges than I will be able to eat before they go bad but I don’t really want to ask for any less because at some point I’m not sure it is worth his trouble. So he goes slightly over two jin and the bill is 2.8 kwai or around thirty cents. And that should keep me in oranges for the next couple of weeks.