Inflation eats into China's
mooncakes By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - The beloved national tradition
of nibbling sweet pastry mooncakes and admiring
the fullness of the harvest moon in the
Mid-Autumn, or Moon, Festival has been hit by
China's runaway inflation, forcing vendors to opt
for frugal variations of the rich treat. The
round pastries eaten and given away as gifts
during the lunar festival, which this year falls
on Wednesday, have fallen prey to inflationary
pressures along with all other food products.
Annual inflation in China hit an 11-year high of
6.5% in August, raising fears of rapid erosion of
living standards and potential social
unrest.
Producers of
mooncakes have found themselves in a bind. As
China's food prices have soared, the cost of raw
materials to produce the cakes has increased by
15-30% too. But worried that surging prices could
touch off unrest across the country, the
government has issued stern edicts warning against
price gouging and dictated that the prices of the
traditional treat should be kept stable.
Once splurging on luxurious packaging of
wood, silk and even gold to entice their customers
to choose from a tantalizing variety of mooncakes,
vendors now have to reduce production costs by
settling for plain and down-to-earth packaging.
Many producers, including such established
brands as Holliland and Guixiangcun, have joined a
government-supported initiative to revive the
traditional spirit of the Mid-Autumn Festival by
packaging their cakes in environment-friendly
recycled paper.
Others, still hoping to
offset the higher prices of manufacturing, have
opted for pairing the cakes with health
supplements, trumpeting a new, "green" way of
celebrating the centuries-old tradition.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is believed to
commemorate a Chinese uprising against the Mongol
rulers of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Plotting
to overthrow the Mongol government, Chinese
conspirators exchanged secret messages about the
day of the rebellion written on slips of paper and
hidden inside mooncakes. The uprising, which
brought down the Yuan Dynasty, took place on the
15th day of the eight month of the lunar calendar.
Long void of its rebellious meaning, the
Mid-Autumn Festival has come to celebrate the end
of the summer harvest season when the moon is
closest to the Earth. Families would gather
together to enjoy the beauty of the full harvest
moon and snack on little cakes with a round shape
that imitates its fullness.
The small
pastries with a thick, sticky filling either of
lotus seed or red bean paste are so rich in taste
that tradition dictates they have to be cut into
slivers and consumed with sips of tea.
This accompaniment has inspired several
companies to include brands of famous Chinese tea
in gift packs for the festival. A packet of aged
Pu'er tea - China's mystery tea famous for its
health-giving benefits (see The bubble bursts for Pu'er
tea, Asia Times Online, June 26 - added
to a simply adorned box of mooncakes has become
the hot trend of this year's Mid-Autumn Festival,
according to several vendors.
"It is only
natural that as people become more concerned about
their health and well-being, they prefer healthful
selections of mooncakes rather than any of the
modern versions that are so rich and fattening,"
said Zhu Yanhua, a saleswoman for Holliland
mooncakes staffing a stall in front of supermarket
in suburban Beijing.
Recent years have
witnessed the rise and fall of fashions in trendy
new cakes made in every imaginable style:
ice-cream mooncakes marketed and sold weeks ahead
of the festival by ice-cream giant Haagen-Dazs,
chocolate mooncakes produced by Belgian
chocolatiers, jelly mooncakes and even foie
gras and champagne mooncakes.
But the
explosion of taste varieties is only part of the
mooncake-transformation story. Purists have
deplored what they call the fashion of waste and
decadence, which has dictated ever more elaborate
and pricey packaging year by year.
The
Chinese press has reported about resourceful
producers in the central city of Zhengzhou who
came up with mooncakes made of silver and adorned
with 56 precious stones selling at a price of
6,900 yuan (US$920).
Not to be outdone,
their counterparts in the northern city of
Changchun produced a 1,800-yuan mooncakes box
containing also a golf club, while mooncake makers
in Yunnan province have also managed to pack a
digital camera in with the traditional pastries.
"Such travesties have caused the
degeneration of mooncakes as a symbol of family
reunion during the harvest season," argued Beijing
Youth Daily columnist Pang Hongqi. "These are no
longer family mooncakes but by-products of a
vulgar gift-bearing culture". Announcing their
price-cutting campaign to sell mooncakes in
simple, recycled paper rather than lavish
wrappings and boxes, government officials have
tried to present the current inflation as a crisis
with a silver lining. The packaging drive will
help spread the concepts of frugality, rationality
and health, Liu Jian, a marketing official with
the Beijing municipal bureau of commerce, told the
Xinhua News Agency.
"Luxurious packages
not only distort the meaning of mooncakes but are
necessarily wasteful," he was quoted as saying.
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