Aussie Lobsters Sneak into China

Australian rock lobsters are being smuggled to China via HK

Australia and China have had long simmering disputes as of late, and this has led to the latter banning numerous food products from Down Under.

First it was wines, along with barley, log timber, copper, coal, and sugar, and recently it's rock lobsters.

But the red crustaceans are making their way to China via Hong Kong thanks to some daring smugglers.

Australian wines are banned from entering China

Back in 2015 when China-Australia Free Trade Agreement was signed, smuggling was brought to a halt and four years later, more than 90 percent of Australia's rock lobsters were exported to China, worth a staggering US$553.7 million a year, according to the Australian agriculture department.

However, the trade ban has resurrected smuggling operations. It's not just lobsters the smugglers are bringing over to China, but also frozen meats, cigarettes and other goods, possibly jewellery, bird's nest, or shark's fin.

In April, Hong Kong imported a whopping 157,978kg of Australian rock lobsters -- about 50 times the amount imported in October, just before the ban took effect.

Lobsters are packed in boxes and kept chilled

But none of the lobsters show up as cargo being re-exported to mainland China, said Hong Kong's Census and Statistics Department. Only 5 percent of the lobsters are re-exported to Macau.

"How could people in Hong Kong consume so many lobsters?" asks a local seafood trader. "Of course they must have ended up on the mainland."

Mainland e-commerce sites like Xianyu and Taobao have suppliers in Beijing, Guangzhou and Hangzhou selling rock lobsters for 300 yuan to 1,000 yuan (US$45-US$155) per kilogram.

How they get to China is, the lobsters are chilled -- not frozen -- to keep them alive and the cold temperatures put them to sleep. After an eight-hour flight from Perth to Hong Kong, and cleared customs, the crustaceans are put in water tanks for two or three days to freshen them up and then repacked again in boxes to make the illicit journey.

The lobsters end up on dining tables in China

Some are hidden in fishermens' boats together with their usual haul to get to the other side a few kilometres away, while others are taken by speedboat by smugglers. It's crucial to get the lobsters transported as quickly as possible because no one wants a dead lobster on arrival...

Women Surpass Men in Buying Suits

This show resonates with Chinese women who encounter gender bias daily

Women in China are snapping up more suits than men these days, thanks to a popular streaming TV series called All Is Well (都挺好 dou1 ting3 hao3).

It's about a typical traditional Chinese middle-class family that values sons over daughters. The protagonist, Su Mingyu 苏明玉 (played by Yao Chen) stands up to the gender bias in her own family by dressing in suits in every episode to show off her fierce independence.



The character Su Mingyu has struck a chord with Chinese women, who are following her sartorial sense on social media, sparking a national shopping trend for fashionable suits.

Since the show started in March, she has worn things like a Burberry suit, Max Mara coat, Erdos cashmere sweater and Stuart Weitzman boots. Su Mingyu definitely has expensive taste, but seems like she can afford it.

Su Mingyu wears stylish clothes that reflect success

She projects the ideal look of success that most Chinese women aspire to -- luxury suit-wearing, financially independent, and mentally strong despite going through gender discrimination all her life.

This coincides with the 2019 China Fashion Data Report issued by Alibaba, where the word "suits" was the most searched keyword on Taobao last year for women; the sales volume of women's suits surpassed that of men for the first time on January 27, 2019.

The search for "大哥廓西" literally meaning "big bro, shoulder-padded suit" in Chinese, grew 317 percent year-on-year, with sales up 39 percent.

And with All Is Well inspiring women to consider dressing in suits, perhaps the power suit will translate to even more sales than men's suits this year.

Women are keen to emulate Su Mingyu's fashion sense

Perhaps this is a sartorial way for women to achieve gender equality in China?

Fancy a Jet or Two on Taobao?

Two jets from Jade Cargo International were auctioned off on Taobao

You can buy just about anything on Taobao, the Chinese online shopping site -- even an airplane -- or two.

On Tuesday two Boeing 747-400 freighters were sold on Taobao for 332.8 million yuan (US$49 million), the first time in the world such planes have ever been sold in this online auction format.

They were sold after six failed attempts to sell them in offline private auctions organized by the seller -- a state court -- in the past few years.

You can find just about anything on shopping site Taobao

China's largest private courier, SF Express confirmed it had bought the two jets from the Intermediate People's Court in Shenzhen, which seized them after Jade Cargo International filed for bankruptcy in 2013.

Originally there were three Boeing 747-400s up for auction, but one was unsold (at 122.6 million yuan), which is parked at Shenzhen Baoan International Airport. The other two are at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, with an opening bid of 133.8 million yuan and 135 million yuan.

The final prices of the two planes were 160.8 million yuan and 162 million yuan, up 20 percent from the opening bids.

One of the winning bids for one of the Boeing 747-400

Before the auction started, the bidders had to make security deposits of over 6 million yuan for each plane, and the winning bidder has to send the full payment within 15 days.

The Shenzhen court has been trying to sell off the planes since 2015 for a total of 1.32 billion yuan, and in September it finally put them on Taobao at a much cheaper total price of 391 million yuan.

Interesting to note that demand for Boeing 747s is dropping, with airlines phasing them out by the end of the year. But why not as a courier plane? SF Express said earlier this year that it would spend 2.7 billion yuan on buying planes and recruiting pilots.