[Chinese health experts went on TV
to say cherries were safe to eat if you washed them (the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention says the risk from eating or handling food is
“very low”), while Chile’s embassy said it hadn’t been confirmed that the
tainted batch was from Chile. But it was too late: Prices collapsed as 288,000
tons of imported Chilean cherries approached their expiration date.]
By Lyric Li and Eva Dou
So it came as a shock when cherry
freedom suddenly arrived for everyone.
In January, Chinese media reported
that packaging from a shipment of Chilean cherries had tested positive for
the coronavirus. In the confusion that followed, Chinese
retailers dumped cherry orders and consumers shunned the fruit.
Chinese health experts went on TV
to say cherries were safe to eat if you washed them (the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention says the risk from eating or handling food is
“very low”), while Chile’s embassy said it hadn’t been confirmed that the
tainted batch was from Chile. But it was too late: Prices collapsed as 288,000
tons of imported Chilean cherries approached their expiration date.
Adventurous eaters saw a golden
opportunity to binge on cherries for as little as $2 to $3 a pound, less than a
third the usual price in China.
[Fire
burns, cauldron bubbles — but public chopsticks trouble China’s hot pot purists]
“Before, we’d seen cherries as a
high-end fruit that only those with financial means consumed,” said Gu Xi, a
24-year-old accountant in Beijing who recently bought a 5.5-pound case of
cherries for $23. “Now that we can afford it, it feels a bit like we’ve gotten
closer on some level to the rich.”
Each winter, 90 percent of Chile’s cherry crop arrives in
China, with this season’s shipment estimated
at 288,000 tons. The cherries are usually snapped up at premium prices, a
taste of summer in the cold months for China’s well-heeled.
Gu said he’s enjoying the moment,
even if it’s fleeting. “Cherry freedom doesn’t actually mean our living
standards and purchasing power have gone up.”
On social media, many are celebrating their small windfalls.
“I’m going to pound cherries like a bowl of rice,” one user said. “I have
achieved cherry freedom early in the morning,” another said, posting a picture
of a basin full of cherries.
“All you can eat,” one Beijing spa
advertised, over a photo of a glass punch bowl brimming with cherries.
People reported using varied
methods to try to clean the cherries before eating them, including dousing them
in baijiu, a Chinese liquor that is up to 60 percent alcohol by volume.
[China’s
new booze university wants to change how Americans drink]
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
State media reported that a woman
surnamed Wang in Guangxi province bought 6.6 pounds of cherries and
indulged for five days until she developed bloody diarrhea and had to be taken
to the hospital. Citing Chinese medicine principles, doctors said cherries are
a “warming” food that can cause inflammation if consumed in excess.
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.
[Can
you raise prices after a pandemic? China’s purveyors of hot pot test the
waters.]
“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.
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.
As cherry prices plummeted, Chile’s
Foreign Ministry and the Chilean Fruit Exporters Association sponsored a
$1.5 million advertising campaign across China to mitigate the damage. Cherries are serious business
for Chile, the world’s largest cherry exporter, with last
year’s sales to China worth $1.6 billion.
One ad showed a family gathered to
play mah-jongg with a basin full of cherries ready for snacking. Another showed
a bouquet not of roses but of individually wrapped cherries.
The campaign included testimonials
by Chinese food-safety experts on state television, the Chilean export group
said in late January.
“For consumers, imported fruits
usually won’t cause infection,” Feng Zijian, deputy director of the Chinese
Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state broadcaster CCTV. “After
washing it with water, you can eat it without fear.”
Gu, the Beijing resident, said that
imported cherries were sweet, jumbo-size and had a nice color but that the
taste was not always as complex as tart domestic cherries. He said what he
really wished for was durian freedom. The pungent tropical delicacy remains the
priciest fruit in stores.
“I think a lot of people are trying
to be trendy,” he said. “If not for the discounts, I wouldn’t necessarily go to
buy chelizi, because they are not something you need in your everyday life.”
Read more
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