What’s green when you see it, red when you eat it, and black when you throw it away?

 I’ve never really ENJOYED watermelon, I always just saw it as something to just pick around in a fruit salad or an excuse to scare children into thinking a tree would grow in their belly. When I first came to China however, my deep ambivalence to this favorite summer snack quickly became pure hatred. At every hour of the day, as a crisp morning get-me-up, as a midday snack, as an after dinner sweet, watermelon was forced on me like cheek pinches on a newborn baby. Being a non-confrontational pansy, I would accept thirds and fourths with my seconds. For a taste that I didn’t even like, I had to get my face and hands sticky, work hard separating seeds in my mouth, and impolitely spit out the black pellets which always make me think of bloated ticks who just enjoyed a blood feast (have fun imagining that next time you eat some watermelon). The cons of eating watermelon grossly outweighed the pros, almost as much as watermelon’s water content grossly outweighs its melon content. The watermelon that was forced on me was also always in comically large amounts. One watermelon, the smallest divisible serving size, is an appropriate amount of fruit for about 12-15 people. Unsurprisingly, when you offer a basketball-sized fruit to share among 3 people, there are a few slices left over. Oops. Did I say left over? I meant to say, there are a few slices that everyone feels obliged to eat after they have already stuffed themselves with the rice, beer, and initial watermelon that was forced on them earlier. This lifestyle continued until one day when the watermelon season ended.

I lived in peace for months until my visit to Rongjiang last week for teacher training. I stayed there for two weeks giving local English teachers lessons about creative teaching methods, and during my stay I ate more watermelon that I ever had before. Rongjiang, a small, dirty village in southwest China is actually quite famous for its watermelon. This is why, at first, I wasn’t too upset to be eating watermelon again. I’d had a long and cold winter to recover my watermelon tolerance, and for once the pros of eating watermelon outweighed the cons. This watermelon was sweet, flavorful, and full of nutrients.

WAIT! Full of nutrients!? Really? But I thought watermelon was just all water! For a long time, I did too. It turns out that I had prematurely judged my waterlogged enemy. It turns out that I was wrong in thinking that something so watery could not also have meaningful substance as well.

It is after my experience in Rongjiang that watermelon has gone from being my enemy to being, once again, a fruit to which I prescribe a great deal of indifference.