In watermelon sugar

There used to be a hawker at the night food market on the waterfront of a little island in the South China Sea, who sold slices of watermelon. Delicious!

Even more so if you followed a local custom of lightly sprinkling the watermelon slices with some salt.

Result? Sweet and sour in one heavenly bite. Plus, but this may have been an old wives' tale, the addition of a small amount of salt was said to ward off diarrhoea.

Watermelons are believed to have originated in southern Africa, but by 1000AD they had arrived in China. They are hugely popular there, Mister B in Beijing in 1984 saw truckloads of watermelons pouring into the city everyday during the hot summer. China is the world's largest producer of watermelons, it is a humongous big business.

Here is a fascinating article about how Chinese peasant farmers have learned how to switch on a computer, gone on-line, and are now using the Internet to market their juicy watermelons. Beijing Times article translated into English by: EastSouthWestNorth