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When a traditional snack with untried taste turns city’s new chic to pursue…

By Zhang Ningning | April 1, 2016, Friday | Online Edition

HUNDREDS of people have been lining up along Shanghai's downtown Fuzhou Road, costing each one hours on the wait, before they could get a bite of Qingtuan, a traditional food for the Qingming Festival season, which has been offered with a new taste this year.

The seemingly citywide quest for the green glutinous dumplings started lately after the time-honored desserts shop Xinhua Lou, announced it developed a new taste for the traditional food with salted eggs and pork floss used as the stuffing. Traditionally, the stuffing has always been the sweet bean paste.

Posts on social media broadcasting customers forming long lines before the store also helped increasing the craze and caused the topic to turn viral.

As of 10am Friday, the queue in front of the desserts shop's headquarters on Fuzhou Road stretched out for about 250 meters.

Several police officers of were sent to patrol the area to ensure order and safety with Barricade Tape set up along the line.

"I came here at about 6:15am, when the line was already about 20 meters long," said a resident waiting inl line, Ding Ning, 24. He was waiting with his girlfriend. "Each one is subject to buy three boxes at most, which was cut from five boxes yesterday."

Each box, containing six Qingtuan, was sold for 48 yuan while scalpers offered to sell them at more than 200 yuan per box

To get more sleep, Ding said he booked a hotel room nearby yesterday evening, costing him over 200 yuan. "But those at the beginning of the queue arrived at 1am. That's difficult to beat," he said. The couple finally managed to buy six boxes at about 10:30am.

A middle aged woman, who declined to be identified, said she came at 6:30 am to buy the food solely for her daughter.

"She has to work and doesn't have time to buy it," she said. "If it's only for me, I couldn't bother to come. It's not that attractive to me because the queue is way too long."

Compared with middle-aged or elderly residents, actually more than half of the customers waiting were younger people, who seemed to be much attracted by posts on social media and were curious to try out.

"You see, overnight, everyone is talking about this. So, of course, you would be attracted to try the new taste," Ding said. "Actually, egg folk, pork floss, who would not have eaten them? But when mixed with Qingtuan, it's still fun," he added.

At about 11am, Ding told Shanghai Daily that he sold his hard-earned extra three boxes for 150 yuan each. "So the money well covered my hotel cost," Ding said, adding they would keep the other three boxes for themselves and families.

Sun Chunli, manager of Xinghua Lou, told Shanghai Daily that supply was limited because all Qingtuan has to be made fresh.

Sun said the new taste was first an innovation from a sub-branch.

"We didn't expect it would be this popular," she said. "Now we produce about 50,000 pieces of Qingtuan each day," Sun said.

Before leaving the site, a security guard on patrol nearby told the reporter he saw a scalper just sold two boxes for 600 yuan.

Metro


 

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