The celebrations for the Chinese New Year (CNY) that will be in full swing for two weeks, are certainly impossible without mandarin oranges. They are sought after during CNY, as they are considered to be a traditional symbol of good fortune. This is because the word orange when spoken in mandarin sounds similar to the word “wealth”.
Most of the sellers around Luyang, Foh Sang and Bundusan imported these from China and Taiwan. Trader Vincent Chew: “We have been selling them during the CNY season for about 22 years now and we have been importing it from these two countries. Frankly, there are no differences between products from either one of the country. This is mostly related to the demand of our customers including our regulars, some favour those from China and some the later.”
According to Vincent, the prices no matter what size keep increasing each year. “It is due to our economy, it’s not really good for now plus the extra taxes we have to pay, that leads to a slight increase in price, probably about a couple of ringgit compared to last year. For instances, we are selling two sizes of mandarin oranges, medium and large. For the medium size it is RM40 per box of 8 kg in 2019 and this year it is increased to RM42 per box. “For the large size, we sold it at RM48 last year and RM50 this year.”
Vincent said they have regular customers who would usually order roughly 500 boxes of mandarin oranges.
[ RM1 = €0.131 ]
Source: dailyexpress.com.my
