Jane Lai
WITH less than two weeks to go until the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on Oct. 3, more than 100 tons of moon cakes have been sent nationwide from Shenzhen every day since Sunday, the China Post Shenzhen office said yesterday.
Compared with the same period last year, the daily number of moon cake parcels dispatched from Shenzhen has increased by nearly 40 percent.
According to the office, the moon cake delivery peak usually occurs Sept. 25. This year, the forthcoming eight-day National Day holiday — from Oct. 1 to 8 — is the longest holiday of the year. As many residents have travel plans, they started mailing moon cakes, a must for the Mid-Autumn Festival, to friends and relatives earlier this year, the office said.
Meanwhile, exports of moon cakes have decreased compared with the same period last year, when about 590 tons of Chinese-made moon cakes worth US$5.27 million were exported to Europe, the United States, Canada, Singapore and Malaysia.
A female official with the city’s entry-exit inspection and quarantine bureau, who identified herself as Dai, said that “very few” moon cakes had been exported this year, but that the exact figures were not yet available.
Moon cakes are not generally well received outside China. Thirty-four countries have bans on Chinese moon cakes while some other countries and regions have banned those filled with pork and eggs, which are common ingredients of moon cakes, according to Shanghai’s entry and exit inspection authorities.
Among the countries to have banned moon cakes are Germany, Spain, France, Brazil and Russia.
This is not a matter of trade barriers, but the different inspection standards of other countries, and China’s food safety standards are considered lower than the international standards, Ren Baiming, vice director of the international market research office of the Ministry of Commerce, told Beijing media recently.
“For instance, Chinese poultry and eggs are still not allowed to enter the U.S. market because …there can be melamine in eggs or tainted additives in meat. Therefore, any foods containing poultry or eggs are prohibited from being imported into the United States,” Ren said.
Most moon cake problems arose from the production procedure. Ren cited the result of a four-year-long sampling, which found that, “Most moon cakes are hand-made or at least semi hand-made and this process is easily affected by germs.”
Meanwhile, nutritionists advise people not to consume too many moon cakes because of their high levels of oil and sugar.
In another development, the city’s major farm produce wholesale markets in Buji, Futian and Nanshan have seen booming sales of fruit days before the National Day holiday, although prices have risen slightly, local media reported yesterday. The markets are selling nearly 100 fruit varieties. Among the most popular fruits are melons, pears, grapes and American blackcurrants.