Mutant oranges from Jiangxi Province

Spotted these yesterday at a fruit stall on Wulumuqi Lu near Fuxing Lu, and had to buy a couple for obvious reasons — they reminded us of a Nerf football we owned in the 1980s. The entire basket was filled with oddly shaped oranges, many of them quite large (the bigger one in the photo above is 14 cm long). The vendor didn't have an explanation for the elliptical look of the fruit, but did tell us that were from Jiangxi Province and "very sweet." The price was something like 3 or 4 kuai per jin ... we forget exactly (we bought a lot of fruit yesterday).

We are not fruit experts, nor do we play one on TV, so we have no idea why these oranges look like they do or if they happen to be a Jiangxi specialty. We do know we have not seen oranges like this before. And we also know that simple Google search tells us that oranges are an "economic staple" of Jiangxi's capital, Guangzhou loves oranges from Jiangxi, and allegedly so did Stalin, calling them the "King of Orange".

So, what did we think? Well, we are saving the big one to show our Chinese instructor, but the small one had very thick skin and was only kind of sweet, not exactly bursting with flavor. Maybe they are better suited for playing catch.

Photo from danwashburn.com.