Welcome to the world of superficiality.

last updated 8 January 2015

China

Liu Shinan

Chinese holidays are going commercial, said Liu Shinan in Beijing’s China Daily. The recently concluded Mid-Autumn Festival featured the traditional exchange of mooncakes between friends, but this year there was a twist. Nearly everyone who bought the sweet, lotus-paste pastries sprang for extra, expensive packaging. Simply wrapped in paper cartons, as I buy them, six mooncakes cost about 54 yuan ($6.70). For an elaborately carved, satin-lined box of six, though, you can spend up to 300 yuan ($37). “Is it not strange to spend so much money on packaging?” Mooncakes are to be eaten, not displayed. The boxes just end up in the trash. With so many Chinese participating in the festival, this waste is no trivial matter. Last year alone, 4 billion yuan ($500 million) worth of mooncake boxes ended up in landfills. Some people argue that the pretty containers show the recipient that he is valued. “My question is, Can’t the mooncake itself serve this purpose?” China is not yet a wealthy country. “When did we become so fascinated with the form rather than the substance of products that we happily spend our hard-earned cash on things of no use?”