Moon cake -- some moon cake box come with a high-end apartment certificate, believe it or not, sold something like 300,000 Yuan. And plenty of them come with expensive gift, like Rolex... So the cake itself does not mean much anymore. And majority of more expensive moon cake boxes bought by working units, and send their employees as gift. So some people raised the question that the company/consumers should pay tax on it since it is a transfer of revenues without being taxed<g>
Most of developed countries have laws to limit the value of box to the certain percent of the product value itself. China has not had this type of laws and I think they will pass one pretty soon. It is true too much waste in those boxes considering there are a couple of billions in cities.
This box thing, BTW, learned from the West. In sociology, it is called Conspicuous consumption. Chinese, by tradition, do not wrap their gift usually.
Quality of household appliances, sometimes it is quality problem, sometimes it is vanity affair. I bought a made-in-China vacuum cleaners 25 years when I was in China, still working. And it is used frequentely, bagless. pretty good. Shanghainese are especially superstitious about anything foreign. This is famous in China<g> |
