'Banquet ban' gives locals food for thought

A city in Southwest China has banned locals from hosting elaborate banquets as a way of reducing food waste and preventing unnecessary expenditure. Yang Jun reports from Anshun, Guizhou province, with Hou Liqiang in Beijing.

There are many government departments in China, both local and central, but few have a brief as unusual as the department that regulates the number of banquets local residents are allowed to host in Anshun, a city in Guizhou province, Southwest China.

The office may sound like a joke, but the problem it was set up to address is anything but amusing. The exorbitant number of banquets being held resulted in lost work hours and a huge waste of food. Moreover, people were gradually sliding into poverty because of the large amounts of money they were expected to hand over to the hosts as cash gifts, a must when attending a banquet in the city.