Pomelos

Some fruits and I make very good friends, so I often invite them for a sleepover in my tummy – and I think this may be the kind of sleepover Amy Chua would approve (scroll down a few posts and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about); but other fruits like cherries and durians…well, we just don’t get along very well, so they end up sleeping in someone else’s tummy. I like pomelos…well, occasionally; but pomelos and I don’t see each other very often, because they only stop by my house – and my tummy – on specific occasions, like Chinese New Year. For this post, I became a little nosy, so I dug up the history of pomelos. In any case, it’s either I have terrible research skills or the sources I have looked through about pomelos have a difficult time coming to an agreement, because some claim that pomelos originated from Malaysia; some, from Indonesia; and some, from China; I even remember one source claims that pomelos originated from Jamaica, but I don’t remember where I saw it exactly. Based on these (contradictory) sources, pomelos, I think, seem to be tourists who visit and come from many different places.

I also think pomelos hold a few full-time jobs. Source 1 claims pomelos grant wishes but not exactly similar to what a genie does – “Melons and the pomelo are symbolic of family unity, they hold out the wish that the family will, like the moon, stay round, large, whole, and also united. Families love to share them and many other fruits. That may be why they buy large fruits and share them together.” Source 2 says that pomelos operate as a substitute for a ball in football games – “In India, for instance, pomelo is very important for children, but not as food: they use it as a ball in football games!” Source 3 comments that pomelos serve as a messenger – “pomelos [in Mandarin] are called 柚子 (you zi), a homophone for words that mean ‘prayer for a son.’ Therefore, eating pomelos and putting their rinds on the head signify a prayer for the youth in the family. In addition, the Chinese believe that by placing pomelo rinds on their heads, the moon goddess Chang’e will see them and respond to their prayers when she looks down from the moon.”

While pomelos seem to have extensive resumes of what they do, some pomelos, I think, can be unreliable at times. Every time my mother brought home pomelos, this was what pomelos advertised themselves as:

(The great expectation – sorry, Dickens, I had to borrow this)

I always imagine each pomelo to be tough on the outside and beautiful on the inside. But this time, this was what I saw in reality:

(It’s either I have terrible peeling skills or the love between the fruit and its skin is just very strong – and I think their love would make a very good love poem, just like the many references to ivies clinging onto trees I have seen in love poems)

Those pomelos were sour, but I invited them for a sleepover in my tummy anyway; at the very least, I was glad they weren’t like this:

Alright, I think I’ll stop here before this post turns into nonsense.

– Jason