Shanxi's "Home of Apples".
A mountain of bruised apples grows in an empty parking lot in Ji County, Linfen, waiting to be turned into juice.
It's getting to the end of the season for many apple planting regions, but Linfen is known for a later harvest season. Thread.
Most of the apples were pretty roughed up, but I found some that looked basically fine and sampled a bite. Tasty.
I asked the old lady nearby how much she was paying per kg for the bulk bruised apple collection and she wouldn't tell me. Trade secret?
Getting into town, probably half the buildings have been turned into temporary apple collection points. I also saw an apple exchange.
Ji County is small (fewer than 90k people) but 80% of its arable land is used for apple production so production per capita is stunning.
"Do you have Aifei, or Ruixue?" I ask the fruit vendor on the main street. (The Chinese names for Envy and Honeycrisp I know are grown here). I'm keen to finally get something other than the ubiquitous Fuji.
She laughs at me. "Not here! We sell them all to the big cities!"
Nov 8, 2025 · 2:50 AM UTC
"You don't save any for yourselves?"
"Those are 20 CNY per jin. No one here pays that much for apples! You'll need a high end store in a big city."
"Okay, then what do you have?"
"I have red Fuji and striped Fuji. From our own orchard."
"Okay fine. 来都来了. A bag of Fujis."
Ji County is about 90km west of downtown Linfen. Besides its apple economy, it also has the Hukou Waterfall, largest waterfall on the Yellow River and second-largest in China.
That's Shaanxi on the opposite river bank.
