How bananas grow in China

It would seem, what is the connection between a sailing regatta and a banana plantation?

In fact, no ...

It just so happened that during the filming of the regatta I had one free day, on which, without thinking twice, I drove deep into the island, and there I just walked all day, visiting various plantations, in peasant villages, rural schools, temples and many other incredibly interesting places.

I wandered along the way to a banana plantation ...

... and it turned out, as often happens, quite by accident ...

There was no specific plan of movement for completely unfamiliar places, I just drove a taxi "deeper", judging by the map, and then walked on GPS, looking for something interesting.

So by chance I came across an abandoned pandan plantation, and behind it, through a stream, I saw a banana plant ...

It is interesting that there, behind the stream, the road going through the pandan plantation is unpaved, and here, on the banana, with a hard surface. Apparently, bananas as a crop are important here. At the entrance to this "banana paradise" is a concrete gatehouse, which turned out to be completely empty.

I did not meet anyone on the plantation itself ...

Bananas here do not look at all the way we used to see them in our supermarkets. Here the fruits have a square section, not a rounded one.

They grow on low trees with huge, heavy clusters.

The bunch itself is essentially a huge flower, at the base of which the fruits begin to form.

The flower itself grows down, hanging on a long trunk-shaped process.

At a certain point in the formation of the fruit, the flower is cut off near the cluster itself. If this is not done, it will consume a lot of nutrients from the tree, and the fruits will not gain the necessary volume and will not have the necessary consumer properties.

It looks like a blossoming banana flower.

After the flower is cut down, the fruits develop for a while, gaining weight and volume, and then ...

... they put on a huge plastic bag.

It is necessary so that raindrops do not get raindrops and dew do not form, otherwise the bananas will deteriorate before they are cut.

So they grow in plastic bags for eleven weeks. Bananas are not brought to full ripeness, because from here they are transported to different parts of the world, in addition, the fruits also dry out during transportation.

Interestingly, not all trees have bananas growing evenly here. Somewhere they are already under the bags, somewhere else they are only gaining volume, but somewhere the flower is only ripening ...

And then, behind the banana plantation, the mango plantation begins.

And here is exactly the same story with the degree of fruit ripeness. On some trees, they are small and are just beginning to form in a familiar form, on some almost matured, but on some they just gathered.

The thing is that the climate here in Hainan is such that many cultures bear fruit almost in a continuous cycle, without interruption for the winter and seasons ...