Celebrating the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival

Greetings from Hong Kong! I’m wrapping up a two week tour of visiting the markets in Southeast Asia. It will be a few more weeks until the ships arrive with the first USA Pears of the season, but I have learned a lot on this trip to help prepare for the new crop!

In Singapore and Hong Kong especially, the Chinese population is getting ready for the Mid-Autumn Festival. To celebrate, streets are decorated with lanterns, and typical foods include mooncakes – which are made from lotus seed paste – and pomelos. Look familiar? They look like giant Green Anjou pears! Pomelos, however, have a thick rind and the fruit itself is made up of wedges, like an orange or other citrus fruit. There is such a wide variety of tropical fruits available in these markets, so it was fun to see these pear look-alikes – and also interesting to realize that here, USA Pears are considered to be the exotic fruits!

About Lynsey

I work with USA Pear marketing offices that work in 38 countries all over the world: from Latin America to the Middle East, from Europe to Southeast Asia and places in between, our representatives serve markets on every continent except Antarctica. I love the opportunity to practice my Spanish and pick up new phrases in other languages (even if it’s just the basics of “hello,” “goodbye,” “thank you” and of course “pear”: pera, birne, гру́ша [GROO-sha], and more to come). I’ll be sharing highlights of the exciting and interesting activities that are taking place to promote USA Pears around the world. My favorite pear variety is Comice. Yum!

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