The delicate craftsmanship that made Laomeihua shoes famous in Tianjin has continued with its new target market. It now employs more than 70 workers, who make comfortable, low-priced shoes for the middle-aged and the elderly, its chairwoman Fang said.

And sometimes, tradition simply wins out. In a recent survey of Chinese women consumers, Tongrentang surpassed other pharmaceutical brands.

Founded in 1669, Tongrentang supplied medicines and prescriptions to royal families for 188 years. Today it has overcome the outdated, parochial connotations that go with being a heritage brand with new medicines and opening chain stores in shopping malls.

A spokesman for Huogongdian, a snack food shop in Changsha, Hunan Province, said it had imported more varieties of food to attract new customers. They previously had only eight kinds of food; now more than 40 are available at the shop, whose annual volume is more than 100 million yuan (US$12.7 million).

Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai said the first group of time-honoured brands employ more than 120,000 people, and all the time-honoured brands employ more than 600,000.

The longevity of these brands, Bo said, shows that China has begun paying attention to building brands.

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