Every year around Mid-Autumn Festival, the Chinese give and receive millions of the traditional sweet pastry mooncakes -- more, in fact, than they can eat -- and the question often asked is: "Where do all the mooncakes go?"

Now the Internet has the answer: from scalpers selling cut-price mooncake gift coupons to those unwanted gift boxes going for a song, mooncakes are becoming the ultimate recycling industry.

"Mooncake gift boxes for sale, 50 percent off. Be quick," says one ad posted on a city-based community bulletin board system (BBS).

In the run-up to the Mid-Autumn Day, which falls on Tuesday, the war for mooncake sales is heating up in stores and restaurants. Meanwhile, a discount mooncake market is booming on the Internet, with the number of related posts hitting 551 on the Beijing sub-BBS alone.

One advertiser surnamed Wu said, "Mid-Autumn Day is synonymous with mooncakes, which are the gift symbolizing close relations between customers, friends and family relatives.

"Mooncakes are more a symbol of Mid-Autumn Day than a foodstuff. A few bites are enough to taste the tradition."

"Xu", who works at a real-estate firm, posted an advertisement and sold four Haagen-Dazs mooncake gift coupons at 30 percent below cost price in a day. "Most of my buyers bought them as gifts," Xu said.

One post was seeking mooncake gift certificates in quantity. The poster surnamed Zhang said he had purchased hundreds of gift certificates via BBS and sold the lot with a margin of about 10 yuan (US$1.3) each.

"The mooncake market is really big, since the custom of mooncake gifts is still popular," Xu said. "When I saw how business was thriving on the net, I found there might be some profit between buying gift certificates at a very low price online and selling them off-line. I've been dealing in them part-time since last Mid-Autumn Day."

"Many new users of the trading posts registered merely for trading holiday gifts," Yao Jinbo, CEO of the city-based BBS, said. "Mooncakes are no longer considered healthy, but they are still the holiday gift."

"The online mooncake business makes a good use of the Internet as a solution for gift waste, but people should also be aware that it might be a channel for overpriced mooncakes," said Wu Jianyong, a researcher of the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.

To discourage over-packaging of mooncakes, the Ministry of Commerce has implemented a compulsory standard in 2006 to simplify mooncake packages in line with the traditional spirit of the festival.

Mooncakes packed in recycled paper came on to the market in Beijing this year, and were cheaper than fancier packs by 10 percent on average.

"The most expensive gift box sold in our store is below 500 yuan (US$67)," said Zhao Linggui, sales manager of a Wu-Mart Supermarket branch in Beijing.

But so-called luxury mooncakes still found their way on the Internet.

"Deluxe Collection" gift boxes, made by Haagen-Dazs in Shanghai, sold at 668 yuan (US$90) each on a trading website. Their description read, "Decorated with hand-made embroidery and gold foil, packed extravagantly, displaying a splendid and noble nature."

The website sales manager, surnamed Liu, said the collection had sold out, ringing up sales of 1.5 million yuan (US$200,000).

Mid-Autumn Day is celebrated each year on the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar when the moon is full, and is traditionally a time of harvests and family reunions.

(Xinhua News Agency September 25, 2007)