Here I am with my Hawthorne tanghulu and cold bottle of water!
Upon arriving in Beijing, we had the pleasure of walking through the streets in the Yandai Byway after a rickshaw tour. This was my first encounter with Chinese street foods! The group and I stopped to grab some and I chose this tanghulu treat with a fruit I had never tried before: Hawthorne. My professor, Dr. Yin, had exclaimed to me about how she enjoyed the fruit, as many people here do, after I had asked what it was.
Comparing the fruit to what I eat at home, I would describe it as an apple-berry. The taste is pretty unique, but as I was eating, big round seeds filled my mouth. My instinct told me not to eat them, and later I looked it up to find out that similarly to apple seeds, hawthorne seeds contain cyanide!
It was very interesting to compare the street foods in China with what limited options we have in the US. I would say the closest options we get to the way Chinese street food was sold, is at farmers' markets or food trucks.