As the End-of-Heat solar term brings warm days and crisp, cool nights, farmers in Tianchang, a city in east China's Anhui Province, are in the thick of the annual harvest for the gorgon fruit, a prized seasonal aquatic delicacy.
The End-of-Heat is the 14th of the 24 solar terms in the Chinese lunisolar calendar. It falls on Sunday this year, indicating that scorching summer is going to end.
Known locally as "chicken head rice" and celebrated as one of the "eight aquatic treasures" of southern China, the fresh gorgon fruit is tender, sweet, and widely favored in late-summer and early-autumn soups and broths for nourishing the spleen and stomach.
At a cultivation base in Sanyuan Village, Yongfeng Town, giant lily-like leaves of gorgon fruit crops blanket the water's surface, as farmers clad in waterproof waders wade into the ponds, harvesting the heavy pods hidden beneath the water.
"We are in our busiest harvest season right now. We head out into the water to work as soon as daylight breaks and keep going until midday. On average, I harvest around 100 kilograms a day," said Shao Meilin, a picker.
Buoyed by sufficient rainfall this year, local yields of the gorgon fruit have risen by roughly 20 percent compared to previous years.
Across Tianchang, more than 4,667 hectares of the gorgon fruit have been currently under cultivation, making it a pillar industry for rural incomes.
"Our base cultivates over 67 hectares of gorgon fruit. Starting from August 23, we've entered the full harvest season. We can harvest more than 1,500 kilograms of fresh fruit every day. We sell through both online and offline channels simultaneously, shipping out over 1,000 kilograms of top-grade fresh fruit daily," said Shao Jingjing, head of the Xiaoshaojia Gorgon Fruit Demonstration Base.
Gorgon fruit harvest enters peak season in east China's Anhui
Chinese stock markets dropped on Monday, as AI and tech stocks continued to see-saw, according to China Global Television Network (CGTN) market analyst Timothy Pope.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed down 0.59 percent at 3,882.01 points, with the Shenzhen Component Index, which has more exposure to the tech sector, closing 2.13 percent lower at 13,794.29 points.
Trading volumes on the two indices rose with around 2.01 trillion yuan (about 296.28 billion U.S. dollars) traded on Monday, up from 1.88 trillion yuan (about 280 billion U.S. dollars) last Friday.
Traditional sectors such as precious metals, coal mining, and insurance led the gains, while bio-tech stocks were among the top decliners.
The ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, lost 3.21 percent to close at 3,431.89 points on Monday.
The STAR Composite Index, which tracks the performance of stocks on China's sci-tech innovation board, closed 3.10 percent lower on Monday at 1,896.16 points.
"The A-share markets seem locked in this cycle of rally and rout for those growth stocks, particularly in the AI and adjacent sectors. Today was very much on the rout side so, while the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.6 percent, we saw the Shenzhen Component down more than 2 percent, the ChiNext board was down 3.2 percent and the STAR 50 down 3.1 percent. Those last three are more exposed to the tech rally than the Shanghai Composite. The big losers as I said were AI hardware companies - Shenzhen Gongjin Electronics was down 10 percent, Zhongji Innolight fell more than 7 percent. But they weren't alone because the other big winning sector of the last few weeks - biotech - was in retreat today as well. Investors were rotating into gold and coal stocks as well, and agricultural stocks extended the food security trade rally that we saw at the end of last week. There were a number of stocks across those sectors, all of those were hitting the upper limits of trade today," said Pope.
Pope said the rest of the week will be dominated by earnings reports from some of China’s biggest companies.
"The rest of the week is going to be mostly about earnings. The end-of-August filing deadline is fast approaching. Friday will be a really big day on the earnings calendar. We've got BYD, PetroChina, Shenhua Energy and a lot of big banks as well. Earnings that we are going to see for ICBC, China Merchants Bank and others will give us an insight into how much pressure the big banks are under with their margins. BYD is also going to be an interesting one in light of the government's anti-involution campaign and its efforts to avert a bit of a race to the bottom in the EV sector. And before we get there, there are Nvidia results in the US on Wednesday which will doubtless impact every stock in the AI space," he said.
Chinese stock markets start week lower on AI volatility: analyst
