Photo: CFP

By Chen Dujuan

To hell with winter, I'm done acknowledging its existence. I'm burning my long johns, putting on a short skirt, a tube top and flipflops and I'm off to pick some strawberries.

That's right. This isn't 1985, and there's no reason to pretend it is. No more eating nothing but cabbage cooked 50 different ways while wearing your coat inside some greasy restaurant, watching your own breath condense in the dry air while waiting for an equally grouchy waiter to deliver yet another depressing kung pao chicken gaifan. There are damp, lush greenhouses on the outskirts of town to explore, and the strawberries there are, believe it or not, ripe for the picking. As a matter of fact, according to exciting reports from the Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry, they'll be sprouting until May. If this unnaturally prolonged growing season doesn't freak you out, then might I recommend joining Lifestyle in checking out these greenhouses.

Li Huasheng is the village director of Beishaowa Village, where the closest Xincheng Lüdu (one of the largest picking gardens in Changping district), is located. "Traffic isn't bad, and we receive about 20 groups of customers each day, mostly families," Li said. Now's a good time to go, as the garden head Li Zejiang told Lifestyle that more visitors are expected during the Spring Festival vacation.

People can eat varieties of strawberries like Sweet Charlie, Chandler and Camarosa as soon as they pick them at Xincheng Lüdu; there's a place to wash the fruit inside the greenhouse. For takeaway strawberries, the price starts at 30 yuan and goes up to 50 yuan for the pesticidefree version. Liu Tang, a Beijing office worker, told Lifestyle, "It's really fun to help yourself, hunting and picking the largest strawberries. Kids especially like that part."

There's veg, too

Besides strawberries, visitors can also delight in uprooting vegetables like celery, broccoli, cabbage mustard and radishes. Prices here are a bit higher than the markets, but part of what you're paying for is the joy of the picking process. Additional postpicking services include giftwrapping, vacuum packing for freshness, or juicing.

Strawberries are ripening in other districts too; between Tongzhou, Shunyi, Huairou and Daxing, there are more than 150,000 kilograms of strawberries on offer for the Beijing market alone, according to the Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry.

Fancy that

For something really fancy, check out Hanhan Produce Production and Marketing Cooperative, located in Xinnong Village, Pinggu district. There, strawberries are nourished with farm manure and sesame oil sludge fertilizers, irrigated with cow's milk and given plant food solutions for extra nutritional supplementation. The result: organic "milk strawberries," which visitors can also pick.

Fruit salad

If all this strawberry picking has got you itching for a tropical fruit salad, seek a variety of fruits at Nangong World Geothermal Park, Fengtai district, where banana trees, orange trees and grapefruits grow in limited amounts – it's still Beijing, after all. Additional vegetables include minitomatoes and New Zealand spinach; if ripe, visitors can pick these too. However, staff told Lifestyle that it's better to call ahead, because all their fruits and vegetables are seasonal, so it's uncertain if they will definitely be ripe the day you decide to drop by. The cost of picking your own tropical fruit in the dead of winter is higher too, as one might expect. It's 20 yuan just to enter the park, after which you can eat whatever you want on site for free, or buy bananas for five yuan each to take with you.

Xincheng Lüdu Picking Garden

Address: North of Beishaowa Village, Nanshao Town, Changping district 昌平区南邵镇北邵洼æ'北

Tel: 60732250 How to get there

Bus: Take No. 919 (Deshengmen to Heying) from Deshengmen to the Beishaowa stop, and go 800 meters north from there.

Driving: Take the Badaling Express and exit at 13C. Take Zhengfu Street and turn east after passing Dongguan intersection. At the first traffic light on Cuichang Road, turn east again and drive for about 800 meters.

Hanhan Produce Production and Marketing Cooperative

Address: Xinnong Village, Nandulehe Town, Pinggu district 平谷区南独乐河镇新农æ'

How to get there:

Take bus No. 918 from Dongzhimen to Dulehe stop.

Nangong World Geothermal Park

Address: No. 1 Nangong Nanlu, Wangzuo Town, Fengtai district 丰台区王佐镇南宫南路1号

Tel: 83315359

How to get there

Bus: Take No. 458 from Beijing South Railway Station to Direyuan (Geothermal Park) stop.

Driving: Take the BeijingShijiazhuang Express for about 20 kilometers and exit onto the side road at Zhaoxindian exit.