My relatives had given me a bunch of orange coloured fruit before I came back to San Francisco; neither they or my parents knew what the English name of the fruit was, so I was stumped for a few days trying to figure out how to describe them. The fruit are orange coloured but are not part of the citrus family; they have big brown seeds in the middle, and the skin is easily peeled off when ripe. They came on branches, so I assume they grow on trees.
Well, today my curiosity on the fruit’s name got the best of me, and I finally looked the fruit up: loquats. At first it was hard for me to figure out how to describe them in a search engine, but by typing in “Chinese fruit” I was able to find them. I figured they were of Chinese origin since my relatives and my family friends gave the fruit to me–never before had I seen loquats at Safeway or any “American” grocery store.
I rather like loquats, after eating them for the past few days. Finally figuring out their English name has made me feel more motivated to find out more English names of other Chinese foods…after all, it would be nice to be able to tell others what my favorite authentic Chinese dishes are (without going into too much detail, haha).