The Shitty Fruit Stand

In front of my apartment there's a small fruit stand, the Shitty Fruit Stand. Most of the fruit I get there is a waste of my money.

For example, the bananas, even when fully ripened, still taste like they're still green. I love mangoes, so for me it's torture to eat the shitty mangoes at the Shitty Fruit Stand. While they're beautiful on the outside, and even beautiful on the inside, they taste like shit. Their flesh is soft and gleaming in the light streaming into my kitchen, but when I bite into them, I'm always disappointed. They're slightly sweet. Do you know anyone who wants to eat a "slightly" sweet mango? I want my mangoes supersweet and tangy (which is why I'll never forget my first bite that I even took of a mango when I went to Florida on a trip with my grandmother when I was twelve).

The tangerines. Well, I'm not even going to talk about the tangerines at the Shitty Fruit Stand. The other day, I went through about four of them, peeling them, biting into them and then spitting them out. They were all very dry and tasted like fertilizer. Nevertheless, since I am a hopeful kind of guy, I kept trying them in hopes that I would get a good one. My hopes, however, were dashed.

Oh, by they way. The papayas are shitty, too. They taste like potatoes. I'm going to boil them and mash them and add butter and salt. I'll bet they'll taste great like that served with a steak.

I am sure my eighty year-old neighbor (who likes to look for recycling in the common trash can on our floor where everyone throws away their trash) wonders why I always throw fruit away. Last week, though, instead of throwing the tangerines away, I brought the ones I had leftover back to the old woman who works at the stand. "They taste bad," I say. She takes them and start to weigh them to figure out how much credit I should get for them. "Just give me a banana, that'll be fine," I say. So, she gives me a shitty banana and I'm on my way.

The other day, I found another fruit stand not too far from my house and bought some strawberries from them. They were sweet! They tasted like real strawberries! They weren't shitty!

And so today, on my way home, in the mood for fruit, I decided to head to this new fruit stand. The Non-Shitty Fruit Stand.

I pick up some bananas and the woman immediately asks what else I would like. This is Chinese service for you, very different from what we are used to in the West. I tell her I don't know what else I would like, I still need to look around.

There are some papayas, and I pick one. I pick up some mangoes and strawberries as well. I pay for them, put them into the basket of my bike and ride home, anticipating a fine fruit salad.

After I walk into my apartment, I put the fruit down on my kitchen counter. I pour some water in a bowl and dump the strawberries in it. Then, I hastily grab a banana and I chop it up using the only knife I have--a chef's chopping knife. I pretend I am a Chinese chef and chop it into 100 (well, almost 100) thin slices and throw them into some tupperware. Then, I grab a few strawberries and chop them up with the same pseudo-masterful technique and add them to the bananas. (Of course, I have to sample the berries and they are sweet. They're not rotten!).

It's time to get a mango. I cut it up and as I slice it into the salad, I sample some and I am practically on the floor writhing in ecstasy. It's been so long since I've tasted a real mango. I guess I'm too used to eating "pirated" mangoes (if you live in China and you've ever watched a DVD here, you know what I am talking about).

I notice in my haste to make my fruit salad that I'm still wearing my backpack, but I don't take it off. I finish my salad by chopping up the papaya. I mix all the fruit together and begin eating.

My ecstasy continues and I wonder why I've bought so much fruit at the Shitty Fruit Stand. Was it because it was so convenient? Because of that old woman's smile? Or maybe was I worried that I would get "caught" bringing in fruit from other stands as I entered my building?

I don't know the answer, but I do know one thing. I don't think I'll ever go back to Shitty Fruit Stand again.