http://blogs.reuters.com/ahmed-assar Ahmed Assar's Profile Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:25:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 http://blogs.reuters.com/china/2009/09/24/the-pear-necessities/ http://blogs.reuters.com/ahmed-assar/2009/09/24/the-pear-necessities/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:25:49 +0000 Ahmed Assar http://blogs.reuters.com/ahmed-assar/2009/09/24/the-pear-necessities/  On a lighter note here is a story that we enjoyed this week out of China.In the classical Chinese novel “Journey to the West” an imaginary fruit in the shape of a baby gives those who eat it immortality.Northern Chinese farmer Hao Xianzhang is not hoping to live forever by turning fiction into fact, he hopes the fabled fruit can sell.The 45-year-old has cultivated 18,000 baby-shaped pears in his orchard this year, hoping to find a new way to make a fortune.A mould made out of plastic applied to young pears for a six-month growth period finally provided the desired results.Click below to see how the farmer gets his pears in shape. Photo credit: REUTERS/Pillar Lee

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