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Market still craves luxurious mooncakes

By Tian Ye and Li Huizi (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-10-05 08:34
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Market still craves luxurious mooncakes<br>

People shop for mooncakes in Beijing on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival. [China Daily] 

With Mid-Autumn Day coming tomorrow, saleswoman Wang Xiurong is finding her business less buoyant than expected.

Her counter in Beijing's Sogo department store has an array of simple, prettily packaged mooncakes costing 88 to 689 yuan (US$11-87) per box.

"The best seller was a box of Cantonese flavoured mooncakes priced at 189 yuan (US$23.9)," Wang said, adding that the same product with a 10-yuan (US$1.25) bottle of wine tucked into the box sold for more than 250 yuan (US$31.6) last year.

Glamorous mooncake packs containing "special accessories" such as wines or fine watches were very popular last year, but this glitzy approach has sent mooncake prices through the roof.

At festival time last year, newspapers reported two extreme cases - a box of mooncakes containing a gold Buddha figurine worth 180,000 yuan (US$22,500) and another box that included the key to a new apartment worth 310,000 yuan (US$38,750).

"People buy them as gifts for friends or relatives, or even as bribes for officials," Wang said. "The 'special mooncake accessories' make the gifts 'heavier' and the recipients happier."

The "Compulsory State Standards for the Production of Mooncakes," jointly released by the General Administration of Quality Inspection, Supervision and Quarantine and the Standardization Administration of China, took effect this June.

According to the standards, mooncake packaging must represent no more than 25 per cent of the total cost of the mooncake product, and the average space between mooncakes in a box should not exceed 2.5 centimetres.

Some local mooncake standards ban accessories in mooncake boxes to prevent extravagance and corruption.

Wang, the saleswoman, said enforcement of the standards has pushed mooncake prices down this year, but some people still like to buy mooncakes with accessories.

"Some shoppers keep asking if there is wine in the mooncake box and leave disappointed when I tell them that the government prohibits 'accessories' in boxes," Wang said.

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