A Sales Peach

There is this shop in Yangshan, Wuxi that sells the best peaches in the whole of China, so said our local tour guide. Going for RMB180 a piece, the fruit is so tender that we can stick a straw into it and drink its fruit out.

He then shared how he once brought a tour of elderly couples to this shop but none of them bought any. Later that night, when the wives went shopping, he was surprised to find that the husbands were in fact very willing to splurge when they took him out drinking. Curious, he asked why are they so willing to pay for these expensive drinks but wouldn’t try the peaches. One of them laughingly answered, “The one at home isn’t a peach anymore, is she?”

He expressed to us his sadness over such answer. After so many years of being together, these women are now each being referred to as a peach no more and their husbands would not even waste RMB180 to bring a little joy to their wives. After all, wouldn’t it be a simple but wonderful thing to just buy one and share it with the wife? 

A sad but very real story but I also thought that with such a story being told, there is no way any man in the bus could get away with not buying a peach for the wife. What an effectively powerful sales pitch that story turned out to be. But then it could be just a sincere sharing by our local guide. After all he didn’t take us to that shop.  

It’s just as well. I imagine it would be really sad eating that big peach all by myself.