Daily Lessons from Life 25 August 2013 - China graft crackdown hits Hong Kong's "Dried Seafood Street"

"China graft crackdown hits Hong Kong's "Dried Seafood Street" - AFP 25 August 2013 HONG KONG: In a narrow Hong Kong street filled with the tang of dried sea creatures, shopkeepers are blaming China's recent corruption crackdown for falling sales of expensive banquet foods such as shark fin and abalone. Such items have fallen off the menu since China's new leadership came to power demanding austerity from Communist Party and military officials as a means of reigning in graft and dampening public anger over corruption. Suppliers, restaurants, and hotels in the trading hub of Hong Kong all say the loss of appetite from the mainland has thinned out sales in a market looking for a portion of China's estimated annual 300 billion yuan (US$49 billion) expenditure on state-funded banquets. The Chinese are turning their eyes towards Western and environmentally-friendly food rather than traditional banquet favourites like abalone and shark fin," said Ren Guoqiang of consultancy Roland Berger & Partner. Bruce Shou, a student and food enthusiast who routinely visits Hong Kong from Hangzhou to dine at high-end restaurants, agreed. "Sashimi, beefsteaks and foie gras look fancier to me, whereas abalones remind me of something old-fashioned and bureaucratic," he said." US$49B of state-funded banquets! Wow!! That is BIG money alright. IF only I have the heart to go pursue them! Lessons for me are: 1. some of the EXPENSIVE foods are quite nutritious-less! Any rational person would not have spent more than 1c on it let alone hundred or thousand of dollar on it!; 2. alas, some clever marketers will package it and promote as something mystical, something only the HIGH END people can afford to taste it! When the sense of being has been uplifted multi-fold, the head no longer function rationally. The emotion takes over. You have ARRIVED! You are THE ONE!! You are SPECIAL!!! So you deserve to have these 'expensive but quite useless foods'! LOL!!; 3. so what now? Will the same stupidity be transferred to eating EXPENSIVE and USELESS Western foods? Maybe. Though I hope not! If not, it is just the vicious circle going round and round manifesting in different forms and guises. Will the corruption stop or will the 'food' for the corrupt people merely changed?