Don't Eat The Watermelon

Chinese nightmare fuel

Today we had our pre-travel briefing with the adoption agency.  As someone who travels to China pretty frequently for work, I found this to be somewhat amusing.  They want to be sure they cover all the little things you might not be aware of, I suppose -- you'll cross the dateline going over and lose a day, your hotels will have all the amenities you've come to expect as a spoiled American, western toilets are available and will be standing by, etc. 

And don't eat the watermelon.  Actually, this advice comes as part of a larger injunction not to eat any fruit you can't peel yourself, which sounds perfectly reasonable on its face.  You don't know what peseticides might have been used in growing the fruit, and you don't know how it's been handled or whether it's been washed before being served to you.  As background, it may help to know that most every traditional meal served in a Chinese restaurant ends with fresh fruit.  This can consist of apple or orange slices, pieces of dragonfruit, grapes, and almost invariably, sliced watermelon. 

Since watermelons aren't peeled, however, its inclusion in this part of the spiel was a bit confusing.

Watermelon has a thick rind, the outer part of which never touches the flesh.  I will cop to the fact that I have never refused any watermelon served me in China, and I've never once suffered any kind of illness or even a moment's discomfort as a result.  So I had to ask the reasoning behind this admonition.

The answer is that one doesn't know where the knife that cut the water melon has been.  I didn't reply that one also doesn't know where one's plate or silverware or other preparation utensils have been, so why aren't they telling us not to eat the boiled peanuts, or pickled cucumber, or any of the other assortment of appetizers and condiments included in many Chinese meals?  Maybe there's an obscure Chinese tradition I wasn't aware of, to ceremoniously dip one's knife in a vat of typhoid before slicing watermelon, but I don't think so.  I'll probably continue taking my chances. 

But the conversation did get me thinking about another purpose watermelons often serve in Chinese culture -- artform.  They carve them like pumpkins into all sorts of mind-blowing patterns and shapes.  The venom-spewing homonculous emerging from the watermelon at the top of the post is one particularly dire example, but more often than not these sculptures can be both beautiful and interesting.  For example:

Here we have a fairly decent rendering of Vincent Van Gogh.  Note that the artist even employed a style not unlike Van Gogh's own.

                                        

The traditional Chinese dragon.

The tango. 

The Olympic watermelon.

And the piece de resistance, a little number I like to call "fractal madness."  I don't know who created this, but he obviously had too much time on his hands.

The food in China is exactly as advertised -- absolutely fabulous, with endless variety and staggering creativity.  The Chinese take their food very seriously, and it shows.  I'll try to post some pictures of our meals once we get over there.  

Unless they serve me something like at the top of the post, in which case I will be too busy performing an emergency exorcism to be snapping keepsake photos.