An ongoing scandal casts some light on price gouging on the foodservice side of China’s seafood industry – as well as the ability of restaurants to charge vastly inflated prices for wild-caught species.
The scandal centres on a large seafood restaurant in the northerly city of Harbin which charged a tourist over CNY 10,000 for a dinner of sturgeon, yellow cheek carp and Eurasian daces (Leuciscus) for 20 guests.
The tourist, Chen Yan, sparked the controversy by posting photos on his Weibo microblog of his bill and of bruises received from staff at the restaurant, Bei An Yu Sheng Yu Cun, when he refused to pay. Harbin local government has announced it’s investigating the case after Chen’s microblog post was picked up by local media and then national television.
Over-charging of tourists has become a feature of the annual Chinese New Year holiday, when millions of Chinese hit the road. Chinese social media users have labelled the case ‘divine fish prices’ and compared the price gouging to a case last year where another tourist was famously charged CNY 38 per shrimp during a visit to Qingdao for Chinese New Year.
Taxi drivers and tourist guides had been channelling customers to the Bei An Yu Sheng Yu Cen, according to a report on the incident by the Beijing Times newspaper which also details how neighbouring restaurants had been selling sturgeon for a quarter of the price paid by tourist Chen Yan. Yet it’s not clear if the restaurant was charging more because it was selling illegally-caught sturgeon. The Beijing Times quoted a customer at the restaurant saying she was willing to pay extravagant prices for the sturgeon “because it’s rare”.
While Harbin has promised to investigate the restaurant through the city’s Price Commission and Industry and Commerce Bureau, there is also an investigation into the restaurant serving sturgeon. China has outlawed fishing of many varieties of sturgeon but illegal fishing has continued –along with much smuggling of the fish across the border from neighbouring Russia.
The current pricing scandal involves a restaurant whose name translates as ‘Northern Wild Fish Restaurant’ which also advertised all its seafood as ‘coming live from the Songhua River.’ The scandal also shows how restaurants in China take advantage of wild caught seafood to push up prices. The 2015 case involved a Qingdao restaurant justifying exorbitant prices for shrimp because they were ‘fresh, ocean caught’. The restaurant in that case, Shande Live Seafood and Home Style Restaurant, charged a tourist CNY 1,520 for a plate of 40 such shrimp.
Much anger has been expressed on Chinese social media at how ineffective local authorities have been in protecting consumers from price gouging by seafood restaurants. But the lack of traceability seems to be an equally an issue. Calls by SeafoodSource to several seafood restaurants in Harbin revealed that while most were selling “wild sturgeon” none of the restaurants could tell precisely when or where the fish were caught.
