PRPG:

Scandalous Peaches!

August 11, 2014

“Peaches come from a can / they were put there by a man / in a factory downtown / which put little pairs of panties on them”

Qixi peachesIn the U.S., we use Valentine’s Day as a way to give that special someone erotically charged gifts and edible aphrodisiacs. In China, they have the Qixi Festival. It fell on August 2 this year, and the hottest (in many senses of the word) gift this year were peaches.

The peaches are labeled “When the Honey Peach Ripens,” which we’re told is a blushingly ribald euphemism when its spoken in Mandarin. Fruits have long been considered an aphrodisiac or romantic foods—particularly figs, avocados, pomegranates, and strawberries. They reportedly contain chemical compounds that lead to arousal, but the Qixi peaches are a bit more direct in their approach. They’re boxed wearing tiny little pairs of lacy underwear. (After all, peaches do sort of look like a human rear end.)

The trend was started by a major fruit vendor outside of Wuxi, an area whose main industry is the manufacture of…women’s lingerie, so they had the materials laying around anyway. Sold in a package of nine, in a box lined with satin, the peaches cost the amorous fruit buyer 498 yuan…or about $80. (That about matches up the flowers-and-chocolate markup we experience in the U.S. on Valentine’s Day.)