Xinjiang Watermelon
9 min read“Our Xinjiang is a good place and there are good pastures in north and south of Mt.Tianshan; Gobi desert becomes fertile land and melons and fruits are sweet all year round…”This song is not only the praise of Xin jiang but also is a true portraiture of Xinjiang. It is no exaggeration to say that “Melons and fruits are sweet all year round”.”With quilted jacket in the morning and silk at noon, eating watermelons around the stove”is the unique characteristic of Xinjiang. Turpan grapes and honey melons are well-known to the world. However, does anybody know that there is a place called Xiayiedi and there is a kind of watermelon in Xiayedi? This is the mystery of the vast land of Xin jiang.
Xiayiedi under the jurisdiction of Shihezi City of the eighth division of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps is a place that may be better than the regions south of the Yangtze River. It is also an agricultural and sideline production base in Xin jiang. Thewatermelon in Xiayedi even has the reputation of “the first melon in Xinjiang”. It is known by its big size, with around 10 kilograms for each one and the smallest is about 6 kilograms. There are many legends about it, among which the following shall be the most mysterious one.
In old ancient Kutsi kingdom, there was a nice and kindhearted girl named Dilber. Her singing was as beautiful and moving as a lark and it brought endless happiness to the poor villagers. Wherever she went, her singing followed. All the villagers liked her as she was their own child. Soon, her ability to sing and dance was known by the headman. The headman forced her to be his concubine, yet Dilber would die rather than agree. The headman bought off a countryman of Dilber and put drugs in her drinking water. Thus, Dilber became dumb and couldn’t sing to villagers any more. At that time, there was a young man named Yasen who had always loved Dilber. Seeing Dilber’s great grief, he waspainful too. One day, he had a dream. In the dream,a fairy told him there was a panacea called Awuzi in remote Haihan which could cure Dilber’s throat. Hence, he survived from numerous difficulties and dangers and finally found Awuzi in Haihan. After taking Awuzi, Dilber regained her past moving throat as expected. In order to let more people benefit from the mystery of Awuzi, the villagers brought back its seeds and planted them in their own fields. From this, many throat sick people were cured. Awuzi is sweet and moist and ithas been passed down from generation to generation as a kind of fruit popularly enjoyed by people. Awuzi is actually today’s watermelon in Xiayiedi.
Xiayedi is located at the northern foot of Mt. Tianshan and in the southern edge of Junggar Basin and Gurbantunggut Desert. It has a typical continental arid climate with soil of sand texture. It is hot in summer with long time sunshine, enough light and heat resources. There is a big temperature difference between day and night, with its daytimetemperature being as high as 30℃ and the temperature plummeting to about 15℃ at night.
The sands and stones have an effect of preserving soil moisture. They accumulate nutrients, give plenty of moisture to the roots and provide favorable recharging conditions for the regrowth of watermelons.
People in Xiayedi have a special love for watermelons. No matter you are a native or an outsider, as long as you visit their melon fields, they will hospitably pick one of the best melons for you to fully satisfy your taste buds. For this time being, you shall never be polite and just let go of your appetite to enjoy it. After eating, the host will bring you a basin of sun warm water to wash up yourself. It won’t be very long before the water on your face has been dried by the breeze of the field and that kind of pleasure and refreshment can never be matched by any deluxe cosmetics.
In Xiayedi, people, whether adults or children, all like breaking dried buns into small pieces and putting them in the watermelons to eat. They called this “buns in the watermelon”. Half a watermelon and a bun is a meal and people are all satisfied as if it were better than any other delicious food. The best gift to visit relatives for melon farmers in Xiayedi is a sack of watermelons and if the watermelons arrive, the love and affection arrive. If you go to visit a family of Xiayedi in winter, you can have a taste of their carefully stored watermelons. Sitting on the edge of the warm brick-bed, eating watermelons of the past season, you will feel as if you were back into the midsummer full of fruits and melons.
Then, you may say, what a lucky gourmet I am! Watermelons in Xiayedi are divided into summer melons and winter melons. The summer watermelons are ripe fast and they shall not be wrongly picked even with only one day. If picked earlier, the melon pulp will be stiff with less sweetness. If picked late, they will be too ripe with only silk fiber being left and they will be dry in mouth with no water and taste of sweetness. The autumn melons are ripe late and as symbols of life continuations of watermelons in Xiayedi, they are suitable to be kept and stored in winter.
People in Xiayedi are very good at storing watermelons. The winter in Xin jiang is notoriously cold. The weather of -20℃ is very common there. In order to maintain the original taste and flavor of watermelons, melon farmers figured out a natural storagemethod-melon cellar after years of practice. Before picking watermelons, farmers dig a cellar large enough to store watermelons in the center of the melon field and pull a few cars of clean sand to the field. When melons are ripe, they will put the watermelons into the cellar tidily by way of a layer of watermelons and a layer of thick sand, make a stent above the cellar, hang the withered seedlings over the stent, cover the cellar with soil, leavea scuttle to ventilate and then seal the door. This is a creative unique skill. In winter, merchants will come to purchase watermelons. Opening the melon cellar, you will beamazed by the clever storage method: The rinds of watermelons turn dark green and become glossy with sticky and rough touch by hands, as if the sugar were about to gush out of the melons. And the verdant pedicels are thin and hairy, just like that the melons are picked off right now. The price of watermelons in winter will turn a few times higher than that in summer. It costs at least 3 to 5 Yuan to buy one kilogram. As these are counter-season melons, they are certainly a rare delicacy. Taking a sip with rich sweet, there is absolutely no strange taste. In each Guakezi(watermelon planter) family, there is such a melon cellar or even more.
Xiayedi people obligingly call melon planters Guakezi, which means they are experts at planting watermelons. Most Guakezi in Xiayedi are men, but there are also some women proficients. Strolling in the fields, you will see persons who are wrapped from head to feet, leaving only the two eyes outside, looking after the melon plantlets in the field. They are female Guakezi. Because they are cautious and can resist loneliness, putting all the hopes and affections on the melons, they often have more harvest than the male Guakezi afterautumn. This attractive scenery would reproduce every year. In these circumstances, your may have much reverie in mind: the “heavily armed”girl must be a frugal, intelligent, beautiful and virtuous beauty. At the ripe time, tasting the watermelon she plants in the moonlight with gentle winds and light clouds, she would gain a rare pleasant and wonderful feeling which even the immortal can hardly enjoy.
People in Xiayedi do not prepare tea or water to quench the thirsty at home in summer.
When they feel thirsty, they just cut a watermelon conveniently, sitting or squatting to eat it up. They call “cutting the melon”as “Dagua”. Xiayedi people regard watermelons as the most thirst-quenching drink and also the sweetest kind. When they sell the melons, they dare to shout confidently,”Xiayedi watermelons are free if they are not sweet!”Such sufficient confidence makes you draw out the money beyond control to buy a big watermelon which is so heavy that you should spare great efforts to carry it home.
Melon planters in Xiayedi regard watermelons as a potion of curative prescription. If the family member who gets inflamed, mouth sores or suffers from asthma and cough, he or she can use watermelon to cure the diseases. In the evening, he or she picks a watermelon, removes the top rind of the watermelon, digs part of the melon pulp, puts pear slices and red dates into the melon and then lays the melon on the field. As the dewdrops falls into the melon at night, it would turn to “watermelon dew”. When he or she eats the watermelon with pear slices and red dates after dawn, the disease will be greatly reduced Dong Libo,a famous writer, who was born in Xiayedi, wrote the stories of Xiayediin his novels Mi Xiang and Bai Dou. In the story, the protagonist also ate Xiayedi watermelon.
Xiayedi is a seductive and poetic land with beautiful stories and transitional legends which are repeatedly performing the resplendence of the old Western Regions.
Xiayedi watermelon is sold by Ya(a piece) unit in city downtowns. The sellers are pure Uygur. In a corner of the market,a simple table and a two-foot melon knife is all about a trading. The table is filled with Yas of watermelons with green skin, red flesh and sweet fragrance which can be smelt far away from the stall. The master needs not to yell and the customers would walk over to pick up a Ya of watermelon to eat conveniently which can make them full enough. After finishing eating, they just need to leave one Yuan and walk away. Such kind of trade in which customers just look at the commodities without concerning the sellers is not seen anywhere else. The reason why watermelons are sold by Ya is that the watermelons in Xiayedi are too big. It is very common that a watermelon weighs 15 or 16 kilograms, which makes it not a small issue to buy a whole one home.
Although the watermelon is delicious, it cannot be overeaten, because watermelon is a kind of cool food according to Chinese medicine. Overeating watermelon will easily hurt the stomach and cause abdominal pain or diarrhea. Especially the patients with cold-dampness and stomach disease should eat less or not eat watermelon, and patients in early cold should not eat watermelon, either. Generally speaking, people would readily throw the watermelon rind away after they eat up. There is a saying,”10 Jin (a unit of weight, equals half a kilogram) of watermelon has 3 Jin of rind which is really a pity to be discarded.”The sugar melon strips processed by watermelon rinds are sweet and crisp. Meanwhile, the rind is the raw material to make assorted candied fruits. Watermelon juice also contains a variety of important chemical compositions which are good for health and cosmetology.
You might as well imagine that even the wind would sweep hot waves to the faces of people in summer. You throw a Xiayedi watermelon in cold water, take it out soon and cut it into tens of Yas. Waves of ice-cool feelings would have already permeated into your heart and spleen before the watermelon touches your taste bud. Taking a bite, you will feel a soft and crisp flavor with pulp paste. The wild fresh fragrance of the melon rind and the crisp and sweet flavor of the pulp fill the taste sense of people. So, in the ripe season of watermelons, shouting cries of the dealers and the bargaining voices of buyers can be heard without end in each street and alley. The voice is always echoing around the corner “Boss, cut a Xiayedi watermelon with thin rind and crispy pulp paste!”
