Scalpers are lining up outside bakeries and taking to the Internet to sell coupons for mooncakes in the runup to the Mid-Autumn Festival, which arrives on Sunday.

Every year, for several weeks leading up to the festival, scalpers cash in on the coupons, which are often given away as gifts by employers, clients and friends.

Mooncakes are perhaps China's closest equivalent to Christmas cakes - a seasonal treat that many don't particularly enjoy eating, so the cakes and coupons for them are often pawned off on friends or co-workers and sold to scalpers.

Many companies think they are great gifts, however, and turn to scalpers so they can buy large numbers of high-end mooncakes at a discount. At some large bakeries on busy downtown streets, the scalpers were hovering like vultures yesterday asking to buy mooncake coupons as well as selling them.

The scalpers usually buy the coupons for half the price of the mooncakes they can be redeemed for and sell them at a discount of 30 to 35 percent. The business is so good they can easily earn a daily income of several hundred yuan, according to several scalpers. Since the value of the coupons will drop drastically on the day of the festival, the scalpers are trying every means possible to move as many coupons as possible by the end of this week.

One local website lists a mobile phone number along with a message asking to trade mooncake coupons and offering to pick up and deliver the tickets free of charge.

Similar messages can be found on many websites in the city. Some scalpers say the websites give them access to a large number of potential clients while avoiding the police, who often hassle them on the street, although few if any scalpers are arrested for trading the coupons. A Shanghai Daily reporter yesterday witnessed one confrontation between city authorities and coupon scalpers at Xing Hua Lou, a Cantonese restaurant renowned for its mooncakes.

Not long after an urban management team told the scalpers to leave, they were back outside the restaurant doing business. "They just come and go like flies. Very annoying," said a passer-by.

Officials say there are no specific laws to charge the mooncakes scalpers, and proving they broke the law is extremely difficult.

(Shanghai Daily September 14, 2005)