Chinese New Year : Mandarin Oranges

 Every year, Sibu people would be eagerly looking forward to the the various Chinese New Year Mandarins from China. Just for the record, we Foochows in Sibu enjoy a variety of those Mandarins which have different names.

Whenever Chinese New Year is near and I see the wooden crates which keep mandarin oranges safe during shipment, I would be  thinking of my late grandma and my late mother. They loved eating mandarin oranges just like any one of us, if not more.

My grandmother who was China born, missed her fresh fujian mandarins. She would tell us stories of the beautiful mandarins growing on the trees near Bangdung, 6Du where she waited for a few years before she was able to travel to Sibu. You see she was sold as a child bride at the age of 4 to the Lau Family. While waiting, she learned how to do domestic chores, cook and sew.

Brought up to be very frugal, she was a sparing eater and a careful housekeeper. Therefore, I saw my grandma as a very careful mentor. She would only eat a few mandarin oranges during Chinese New year. And having a big family would often deny herself of eating too many oranges, letting others eat more.

similarly my mother who never liked anything sour would let the children eat most of the oranges, and she would only take a few slices from us from time to time. She had never, in her lifetime, sit down and have several mandarin oranges at any one time. Often she would say the oranges were sour and I suspected that she just wanted us to have more, and she herself less. 

Today there are several kinds of mandarin oranges in the market. And during the Pandemic the prices are truly exorbitant.

Pong kan

Pong Gang has a very smooth skin and is easy to peel too. It is the sweetest among all the mandarins produced in China.

Lukan. Lukan is special in my family because we had an aunt surnamed LU. We would always associate this expensive and favoured Chinese Mandarin oranges with her and her LU family. They were scholarly and classy people.

The lukan is smaller than pongkan. I like it because the skin is very recognizable and easy to peel. You wont lose much of the fluid peeling the orange.

Swatow

The skin is rough, but is easy to peel. Some people call it the Cantonese gang. They have a longer shelf life. Some people keep them on the table or even in their car for more than two weeks.

These are the small ones and are usually sold in one kilo bags. They are usually sweet.

This year 2022, the prices of mandarin oranges have gone sky high. So we cannot really eat a lot of these oranges at one sitting. We have to space out our eating.....one at a time, and perhaps one a day....