How a little raspberry typifies life in the capital

This blog starts with a tale about a young girl who was born on the southern tip of an island called Tasmania. This small island lies at the bottom of Australia––a large, red, ancient landmass that fits snugly against Asia’s underbelly and has spouted such gems as Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman and Coopers Ale.

Few know much about this island––Tasmania––but it is a hidden jewel of rugged mountain wilderness, untouched bays and beaches, stunning rivers, crisp apple orchards, and the best raspberries in the world. In fact, this little girl spent her first 10 years in southern Tasmania with a permanent raspberry stain around her mouth.

In the north of the island, her grandfather and hero––Bampa––a photographer, journalist, historian and avid gardener, grew more celestial fruit. And every time the little girl visited her Bampa, she was treated to an extra special tub––a big fat two litre ice cream tub of the most divine, sweet, rosy, fragrant raspberries any mouth could possibly imagine. No one was allowed to dive into that tub except the little girl. Bampa even wrote her name across the top of the tub in big, bold letters: TANIA.

You could say I am now a bit of a raspberry connoisseur. Yes, yes, if I was stranded on a deserted island and could only take one food with me… you guessed it.

So. Today I scooped unsweetened yogurt, home-baked oats and a sprinkling of roasted almonds and pepitas into my breakfast bowl, and on top––a flourish of fresh Beijing raspberries. As they tumbled into the bowl, my heart fluttered, as it always does. They are good raspberries. They are not Bampa’s raspberries and the seasonal quality only lasts a short while, but they are still good.

In true Beijing style, what I love most about these Beijing raspberries is that they’re “unfinished”. They’re not processed to within an inch of their juice. They are fresh from the garden, a little dusty, and some are imperfect. But what strikes and shocks me most about these Beijing raspberries is this:

Some of them still have the stem attached.

Now, I’m not joking when I say I’ve eaten more raspberries than all of you put together. I’ll pass up a trip to the movies––gasp!––in favour of a punnet of raspberries in Australia (yes, they cost as much as a movie ticket sometimes). So, you must believe me when I say I’ve seen many a sweet little beaded jewel.

So how is it that I had to come to Beijing to view my very first be-stemmed raspberry––ever? When I first picked it up and looked at it, the sight kind of got stuck in my eye like a wooden brick. It wouldn’t fit. I turned that raspberry over and over and thought “my God––this has never happened to these eyeballs before. What a marvelous visual treat. How could I have waited so long to see this? What went wrong with my life?”

This might seem like a small thing to you, but to me, this raspberry-stem-sighting (and subsequent gentle plucking––oh how satisfying) typifies Beijing to me.

This is a place where you’ll see severed pigs heads next to your tinned Italian tomatoes at the wet market. This is where you’ll see women in restaurants, whizzing with the door open. This is where you’ll see cow belly being sliced on an outdoor table next to scorpions on sticks at the night market on Wangfujing. This is where you will see Chinese tots laying a new sewer system on the street. This is where you’ll find a greater selection of green vegetables than all the tea in China. This is where you’ll see a man blowing snot onto the ground before raking his fingers through freshly cut noodles in a filthy tub in the hutongs. This is where you’ll see an elderly woman pedaling her frail husband on a three-wheeler bicycle amongst the streaming cars on Dongzhimenwai Dajie.

And this is where you’ll find raspberries with stems attached.

How could I ask for a better experience for my children? I’m keeping that damn raspberry and I’m showing it to my children before they get to my ripe old age and miss out.

But seriously, how did this raspberry-stem oversight happen to me? I’ve thought about it at length and I think I know how.

We grew mulberries in our yard in Tasmania. We grew loganberries, peaches, plums and nectarines. But not raspberries. So, horror of horrors, I’ve never actually seen them on a bush. And whenever we visited Bampa, his raspberry crop was already harvested––ready and waiting in the big fat ice cream tub… waiting so long for me, the bottom ones had turned to a puddle of juice. And where were the stems?

I guess my Bampa had spent countless man hours shucking every last raspberry so I could scoop them straight from tub to eagerly awaiting mouth.

Now that’s love.

Tania McCartney