Several weeks ago, the excellent retro-repository and all-around Wunderkammer, Collectors’ Weekly featured an engrossing article on the seemingly accidentally romancing of the mango, elevating the exotic fruit for the people of 1968 China to a cult-like reverence.
The rather bizarre adoration of a piece of fruit reminded me of the relation, sometimes contrived and sometimes meant in a derogatory way, of the banana and East Germany.
The symbolism is not parallel but the banana was likewise an ideological hot-potato, representing by turns the excess of the West, the closed markets of the East and the ungood of such aspirations and appetites.
I did not experience all the subtleties of the days of scarcity and plenty myself and don’t know what politics and shrewd trades were going on behind the scenes of real and stereotypical jonesing for not fresh-produce, but rather bananas in particular (going on for decades, untold, though starting around the same time, and not just a passing fad), creators black-markets, et also by party elite and an enduring symbol of divides still being bridged.
