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Market still craves luxurious mooncakes

By Tian Ye and Li Huizi (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-10-05 08:34

Online luxury loopholes

However, expensive boxes of mooncakes complete with "accessories" can still be found online, as some mooncake companies turn to the Internet to play hide-and-seek with the government.

The Shanghai-based website Sinocake offers dozens of expensive mooncake sets online, some of which contain luxurious wines or watches.

A set of mooncakes produced by a Shanghai-based food company containing 11 mooncakes and a 200-ml bottle of brandy sells for 288 yuan (US$36) on the website.

In another set produced by a Taiwan-based bakery with a price tag of 798 yuan (US$100), the mooncakes come with gold wrapping, a crystal tray and silver knives and forks.

"Those mooncakes are so popular that they have been out of stock for a week," said a staff member at the website's ordering service.

He claimed that all the expensive mooncakes were approved by government departments in Shanghai, but was unable to name the departments.

"Expensive 'accessory mooncakes' cannot be found at department stores," he said, "but people can order them online. We dispatch staff to deliver our products before buyers pay for them, which makes things very convenient."

However, 76 Shanghai food companies, whose mooncake products account for about 80 per cent of the mooncake market, signed a pact in July promising to obey the new mooncake standards, although some of the companies sell mooncakes with luxurious accessories online,

(China Daily 10/05/2006 page2)