Cherry Freedom for All!

Spring is upon us. Not that I feel it in Singapore. Our weather is just hot or rainy, or hot and hotter, that's it. There isn't this excitement about the change of seasons. Unless I get on a plane to check it out in another city. That, isn't going to happen anytime soon.

We don't even get 'spring fruits' since we get them all year round from suppliers in both hemispheres. But yes, I've been eating plenty of luscious strawberries from Japan. The man has been going crazy over Japanese mikan and those Korean 'shine muscat' grapes. 

Now, cherries. It's a tad early and it's neither the season for my favorite Rainier ones from Washington State, nor the sato nishiki from Yamagata in Japan (山形のさくらんぼ「佐藤錦」). I'm not keen on the darker plum hue variety. Chilean cherries are currently in season these three months, and they've been exported by the ship-loads to China. Cherry prices in China have plummeted this year over coronavirus fears, so suddenly everyone has access to 'cherry freedom'. 

The term “cherry freedom” entered popular use in 2018 as part of a tongue-in-cheek hierarchy of financial security circulated among Chinese millennials. At the top was “house freedom,” the ability to purchase a house, something far out of reach for many young people.

At the bottom was “latiao freedom,” or “spicy sticks freedom,” referring to a cheap snack of fiery fried dough strips popular among penny-pinching students.

In between were other degrees of freedom, including “Starbucks freedom” and “car freedom.” More than these others, cherry freedom has captured the public imagination.

Reading this article blew my mind. Lyric Li and Eva Dou's report in The Washington Post published on March 8, 2021- '‘Cherry freedom’ sweeps China despite virus fears — and the thrill is infectious'. I'm not raising eyebrows at the portion about 'cherry freedom'. That I totally get. It's this part of 'quarantining cherry consumers'. 

Alice Du, a 30-year-old university lecturer in China’s subtropical Kunming, said cherries conjured up images of a middle-class lifestyle. “You can look at cherries as another version of the avocado,” she said. “Perhaps people put too much intangible value on it. But by now, it isn’t just another type of fruit.”

Du said she felt safe eating cherries, but she decided not to buy them for friends and family this year because of the coronavirus controversy. “You don’t know if the person receiving the gift might mind,” she said.

A gift of cherries brought trouble for one family. In the southeastern province of Jiangxi, a family of five was taken in for a two-week quarantine on Feb. 15 after a relative brought them a case of cherries as a gift, according to the state-run Health Times. Authorities said the gift box came from a shipment that tested positive for the coronavirus.

While other cherry consumers were not quarantined, some workers were after handling a cherry shipment where packaging tested positive for the virus.

To calm the nation, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (中国疾病预防控制中心) had to issue a statement via state broadcaster CCTV to clarify that the imported fruits itself don't cause an issue or infect humans once they're washed and cleaned with water. 

Also, this reminds me of how when I'm in China, I don't buy fruits based on what people say. I literally listen, hunt for said fruits, look at them and buy one or two to cut them up, then cross-compare them the great internet wisdom before deciding if I want to eat this version of the fruit in China. Sometimes, I really don't know what I'm eating. The fruits could taste a lot different from what I expect. The imported che-li-zi 车厘子and the domestically-grown ying-tao 樱桃 taste entirely different although, both are labeled 'cherries' in English. LOL

Adding to the hubbub, imported cherries and domestic cherries in China are sold under different names, leading to confusion over which fruit exactly was implicated in the virus scare. Chinese farmers have long grown bright red and yellow cherry varieties called yingtao. Imported jumbo dark-purple cherries are sold instead as chelizi, an approximation of the English word “cherries.”

So many people asked if the two fruits were the same or different that experts were brought in to explain.

“There actually isn’t any essential difference between domestic yingtao and imported chelizi, aside from some difference in taste,” Yang Jie, honorary chairman of the China Fruit Marketing Association’s cherries division, told the state-run National Business Daily.