Since the news of "Guangxi Sugar Orange Bravely Entering Harbin" in January rushed to the hot search, the seeds of sugar oranges must be eaten in the New Year this year, even if they are planted. However, when I was busy until the third day of the Lunar New Year, I was surprised to find that there was not a single pound of sugar oranges at home, but the piles of Guangxi kumquats given by relatives and friends, and the Sichuan rake mandarins that my father bought in the fruit store years ago.
Eat citrus in the New Year, open "orange" big profit, the former "orange" is like a brocade, in fact, ordinary families are not so particular about the variety, but I am used to sugar oranges, and I find that its "disappearance" is still a little lost. "I'll buy it if I want to eat", my dad didn't say a word and put on his clothes. Five minutes later, he returned home with a pound of sugar oranges, and at the same time came back with another shocking news:
"You can believe it, sugar oranges are now 9 yuan a catty! ”
Stills from "Daughter of the Mountain".
He felt that he had been deceived, and I asked a circle of friends - I don't know, this year's sugar orange ** is indeed different from the past: 6 yuan a pound at the door of a friend in Hunan, and 8 yuan a pound after the discount in Beijing supermarket, which is much more than expected. So the choice of friends is similar to ours:Give up sugar oranges and buy ** only half of the rake mandarins. Searching for keywords on Xiaohongshu and Weibo, similar comments such as "I don't seem to have eaten sugar oranges this year" also appeared unexpectedly frequently.
Is sugar orange out of favor? Why does it seem that it has not inherited the wealth it deserves under the pouring traffic?
Sugar orange is delicious, but.
I don't remember when I became obsessed with the taste of sugar oranges, but I remember that every time the New Year arrived, as soon as the padded jacket was worn, a set of standard movements buried deep in the texture of the demeanor would begin to be executed: the small body leaned against the kitchen door frame, the hand pulled into the pocket, whether it was a thick padded jacket or a down jacket, I could always take out a sugar orange that I don't know from whose house I didn't know from to stuff into the pocket. When the target is found, the hands are automatically disconnected from the brain. At this time, whether the mouth is chatting with the mother in the kitchen, or the eyes are staring at the TV in the living room,You don't need to think about it, you can start a set of ...... that you can pick, tear, turn, pull, break, and stuff into your mouth independently
Immediately afterward, the molars will start to move, and the sweet, sour, sand juice will tumble along the base of the tongue to the throat. The hand does not stop, it will detect the trash can in front of it, throw the food waste directly, or put it back in the pocket and continue to take out a new "ball". (God knows how many times my mom pulled a clump of orange peels out of my pocket before doing the laundry.) ）
Stills from "Sanfenye".
To borrow a fashionable phrase, this is one of the rare "flow" moments in my life, where the hand-mouth cooperation is almost hallucinating, and the brain only momentarily realizes that the pocket is empty, and realizes what it has just done. Sometimes the reaction is relatively slow, and even go back to the pot with sugar oranges, and take out another round of fruits, until my mother angrily scolds "don't eat anymore, don't eat again", and then wake up like a dream.
In the world of fruits, there are few sugar oranges that are so addictive.
Of course, thanks to the delicious sugar oranges.
This New Year's fruit, which has been popular for many years, was not originally called sugar orange. In the generation of Zhaoqing, Guangdong, people are more familiar with the name "October orange", which has been cultivated by Cantonese people for hundreds of years, and is known for its sweetness and easy peeling, the only drawback is that it is not large. In the 80s, plant breeders tried various methods to induce it to evolve into larger fruits, but the success rate did not seem to be high, so for a short decade, it disappeared from the professional literature on citrus, and only parts of Guangdong insisted on continuing to grow endemic varieties on a small scale - until around 2000, when it re-debuted as a sugar orange in the New Year.
During the Chinese New Year, not only should the family decoration buy a pot of orange trees with a lot of hanging fruits, which means that the home is full of "auspiciousness", but also eat as much "auspicious" as possible. Once sugar oranges were 10 yuan and five catties, the size of one bite, the sweet taste, and the timing of the Spring Festival when a large number of them were listed, all of which made this originally criticized variety a rare good symbol of the New Year of the aborigines of Liangguang in the new era。It was the first time I knew about sugar oranges, and I also benefited from the netizens of Liangguang: they shared the details of eating sugar oranges on social ** as if they were a password, and some people even released** to show the wonderful phenomenon of eating "yellow" the next day. You must know that I am not of origin, ** I have seen the posture of oranges eating people yellow, and my curiosity will come up.
The original sugar orange is not cheap, around 2017, in the first-tier cities, a pound of high-quality sugar orange can be sold for 13 16 yuan a catty, at that time, the field knew it less, and I couldn't understand the meaning, just to be fresh. However, under the strong profit margins, the origin seems to have been shot in the arm, and the planting area has been increased crazily. With the high enthusiasm of Internet netizens,Around 2020, the ** of sugar oranges will finally be low, and other cities can also buy a big bag of happiness similar to the people of Liangguang for less than 5 yuan a catty.
Happiness is for the masses, not for the peasants. When the terminal can be sold for less than 5 yuan, the profit of the field is only a handful. Some disheartened fruit farmers thought about it and cut down the trees and planted other more lucrative fruits, and the changing climate in the next few years also forced the production of sugar oranges, which was originally gaining momentum, to decrease but not increase. As a result, sugar orange lovers in non-Guangzhou-Guangxi areas found that sugar oranges have a price a day, sometimes cheap, sometimes ridiculously expensive. This year, it has become more stable and expensive.
In Yiping Village, Shuangding Town, Xixiangtang District, Nanning, villagers pack freshly picked sugar oranges. (Photo: Visual China).
If Chen Bites Gold is not killed halfway, the flow of sugar oranges may still be strong, but the Spring Festival stalls have always been just a battlefield full of gunsmoke, and the "top stream" will always be reserved for the most prepared people. When Sichuan deployed in advance, it not only increased the planting area of rake mandarin oranges, so that the first fell below the 5 yuan mark, but also operated the marketing of "Chunjian", a high-quality rake mandarin orange; When Liuzhou United Internet platform riveted its efforts to promote the pure sweet and slag-free top Rong'an kumquat, and even hit the hot search for counterfeiting many times, the king status of sugar oranges was not so stable.
To borrow my dad's words, "Oranges, auspicious, don't you eat anything." ”
All of a sudden, there were so many more delicious oranges.
China is the origin of "oranges" under the genus Citrus of the Rutaceae family, and the English name of this category is directly named after "Chinese Mandarin" (mandarin). According to business statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2020, 60% of the world's total orange production comes from China, with southern cities growing the largest area. Even if you include all the varieties of citrus in the Rutaceae family, such as "pomelo, orange and lemon", China's output can reach the top three in the world. With more than 4,000 years of cultivation history, we have absolute confidence in citrus breeding, so it is not a problem to eat delicious citrus in China.
Stills from "Ode to Joy".
Take the crisp honey kumquat that suddenly came out this year as an example, close to the size of a ping-pong ball, when you bite into it, your mouth is full of sweet juice, and the texture of the skin and flesh is like a crisp sweet pea, which is charming and full of vitality, and the kumquat in your memory is the product of two worlds.
As one of China's native varieties, kumquat has been cultivated in Guangxi for more than 200 years, and most of them appear in life with astringent skin and sour flesh. Occasionally, a genetic protrusion that is beneficial to human beings was discovered and preserved by the people of Guangxi, and only then did it have a smooth skin kumquat. Waiting to plant this year's hot crisp kumquat, the probability is even lower than the lottery.
There are 20 million kumquat trees in Quanrong'an, only one gene mutation, and the fruit rate is still very low, so it has long been cut down in other countries", Yang Xiaoyang, a well-known fruit science writer, shared in his popular science**. "But the Chinese, who have grown citrus for 4,000 years, know the significance of this mutation, so it has been preserved." Although it is not cheap, it has become a high-end existence for relatives and friends as soon as it comes out this year. In a top supermarket in Nanjing, a box of Guangxi crispy kumquat wrapped in a single piece of golden aluminum foil paper reached nearly 300 yuan for 18 pieces.
(Photo: Visual China).
Another ** Sichuan rake mandarin orange that has fallen sharply also maintains its balanced taste of easy peeling and sweet and slightly sour. Although it is not as sweet as sugar oranges, the slightly sour natural taste makes people feel a feeling of respect for their taste buds in the world of sweet fruits.
Although it is not a native Chinese variety – the rake mandarin orange comes from Japan, and the Japanese name is Harumi, which means that you can meet when spring comes, it has also been popularized and cultivated in China for 23 years, mainly in Sichuan and Fujian. The reason why the name is down-to-earth is also because after the fruit is ripe, it feels soft and soft when pinched, which is "raking the ground" in Sichuan dialect.
The process of promoting the planting of Sichuan rake mandarin orange is closely tied to the research of experts and professors of Sichuan Agricultural University, and in the first ten years, the first ten years of cultivation have been released more than a dozen articles, until 2011, when it was rated as an excellent variety by the provinces planted. This year, most of the rake citrus planting areas in Sichuan have a good weather, so the production capacity is also more than 10% compared with previous years. In order to promote more effectively, local distributors and related agencies directly work together:Ordinary quality rake mandarin oranges, with at least 1 3 lower than sugar oranges, the first PK sales king, higher quality rake mandarins, directly promoted by the original name of "Harumi" in Japan, and strive to level the ** of sugar oranges. My dad walked around the fruit stall downstairs and told me, "Sugar oranges are 9 yuan jin, baba oranges are 6 yuan jin, and spring see 9."8 yuan a catty. ”
Also competing are Ehime Jelly Orange, whose ancestral home is also Japan, Wo Mandarin, whose ancestral home is Israel, and Nongfu Spring, which is also ancestral home in Australia.175 ° orange ......What they all have in common is that they no longer have the identity of sour assassins like the citrus of the past, and modern breeding science has made their taste achieve the optimal solution that their own varieties can bring: sour personality, sweet and sweet taste. People who like different tastes can find the most palatable choice in different varieties, and the yield is stable and not too expensive, so the advantage of sugar oranges is naturally weakened.
From the former king of traffic, to the current "all" king of hegemony, the process of sugar orange "falling out of favor" is very similar to most of the popular Internet celebrity restaurants and bubble tea shops in recent years: at first, they all embraced a piece of sincerity and gained the love of the public with their unique charm, but halfway through, they all started to lose some shapes.
The explosion of sugar oranges in the past few years has never been purely because of taste. Its beauty lies in the fact that it is the Spring Festival, the season of visiting relatives and friends at home, one of the few existences that is inexpensive and loved by everyone. The peach crisp twist flowers bought by grandparents may not like to eat, but no one will refuse to put a few sugar oranges in their pockets; The pistachios and macadamia nuts on the table of relatives and friends may not feel presumptuous, but the sugar oranges on the table, the mother will always not glance at the warning.
He is warm in winter, and he is cool in summer".
It is the greatest common divisor on the New Year's table. Down-to-earth, down-to-earth figure, and the beautiful taste of not forgetting the original intention, jointly create the sugar orange we love. When it loses its "sense of life" qualities, it's no wonder that other citrus is catching up.
This year, when your family celebrates the New Year, do you eat rake mandarins, kumquats, sugar oranges, or others? **Are you all right?