The giving of presents is an age-old tradition in China. Giving mooncakes to relatives and friends as a symbol of their love, concern and friendship is very common during the Mid-Autumn Festival. However, mainlanders now seem to be giving mooncakes worth thousands of dollars or even replacing edible mooncakes with gold, silver and gems of a similar shape. Is this kind of “mooncake” merely to show respect for the recipient?
Mooncake packaging waste on an individual basis seems unimportant (insignificant) but it accounts for 20 percent of the total waste on the mainland, according to China Sina News. It is estimated that it requires 400 to 600 trees with a diameter of 10 centimetres or above to produce 10 million mooncake boxes.
To address this problem, a law came into effect in June this year to limit the cost of mooncake packaging to less than 25 percent of the cakes’ cost. The volume of packaging is also required to be 35 percent of the total volume of pastry.
But stiff regulations are no match for people’s creativity. Some manufacturers are now producing mooncake-shaped gold, silver and gems as luxury gifts. One such “golden mooncake” sells for 30000 renminbi.
Source: The Standard, 28th September, 2006
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