IN Jinshan, summer is the sweetest time of year thanks to its yellow peaches, one of the special local fruits of the district’s ancient Fengjing water town.

A yellow peach festival is now in full swing at the town, and will run until September 6.

During the celebration, the annual King of the Yellow Peach Awards will be given out to farmers from the Shanghai Fengjing Fruits and Vegetables Association who present quality peaches based on the criteria of appearance, size and taste.

Fengjing’s yellow peaches have grown in popularity over recent years. Thanks to the marketing savvy of local farmers, the fruit can now be found at numerous local supermarkets and online retailers. Shoppers can purchase these juicy peaches at high-end shopping centers in downtown Shanghai like the Jing’an Kerry Center, the Pudong Kerry Center, Grand Gateway in Pudong New Area and Shanghai Times Square.

The peaches can also be delivered right to your door via a variety of online shopping platforms.

But if you want to buy these peaches directly from where they’re grown, it’s well worth a visit to Fengjing.

In this lovely little town, visitors can not only meet local farmers, they can also sample a variety of other local snacks and amble along its charming cobble-stone streets.

And with the local peach festival now underway, visitors can go home with gift boxes containing either two, six or twelve peaches.

After years of development, the yellow peach growing area in Fengjing has reached 267 hectares. Four peach breeds — the Jinxiu, Jinxiang, Jinyuan and Jinhua — are grown in this area. Growers in different villages have established 18 yellow peach associations and work together to develop new breeds with new technologies.

One of the most famous brand of yellow peach to emerge from the area is Fengmi Peach. The brand is labeled as a “green food” under a nation-wide eco-certification body that evaluates the growing, management and packaging of agricultural products.

Currently the town has nine “green” yellow peach orchards. Each peach from these orchards has its own QR code. By scanning the code, a customer can easily trace where the fruit where grown.

In the future, farmers and officials in Fengjing plan to establish an integrated yellow peach industry, with fresh peaches, dried peach candies and canned yellow peaches.

At the same time, fruits such as grapes, cherries, pears, strawberries and cherry tomatoes will also be developed and marketed under their own brands, making the water town a more comprehensive fruits cultivation center.

Fengjing Town

Located in southwestern Shanghai, the water town boasts a history of more than 1,500 years. Local farmers are known for drinking homemade yellow rice wine, wearing homespun clothing, painting pictures on clay ovens and making paper-cuttings to decorate windows and lanterns during festivals.

Zhonghong Village in Fengjing, known as the birthplace of Jinshan farmers’ painting, displays an array of paintings created by farmer artists from Shanghai as well as Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

Visitors to the area can also sample authentic Jinshan snacks such as egg cakes, flat-pan fried buns and shao mai — a kind of dumplings made with sticky rice and diced pork.

How to get there:

By car: Shanghai-Hangzhou Highway (A8 section). Get off at Fengjing Exit. Drive according to the signs for two minutes until see the town’s parking lot.

By bus: Take Metro Line 1 and get off at Jinjiang Park Station. Take the Fengmei Line shuttle bus (Fengjing — Meilong) at the transit hub near the metro station. The bus takes about 45 minutes to reach the town.

In addition, there are frequent shuttle buses to Fengjing from Shanghai Stadium and Hongkou Football Stadium.