1-yuan lunch fuels holiday visits to tourist spot

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There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but visitors to a tourist spot in central China were able to fill up for just one yuan (15 US cents) during the nation’s "Golden Week" National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.

Photo from Chinanews.com

Like elsewhere in the world, Chinese tourist attractions and nearby restaurants commonly jack up prices at peak times. In one infamous case from the long vacation two years ago, a customer of a seafood restaurant in the eastern port city of Qingdao was reportedly charged 1,520 yuan for a plate of prawns.

Laojunshan Nature Reserve in Henan Province went against the trend by offering a traditional local dish of noodles, fresh vegetables and a fried egg at a very loss-making price on October 5. Tourists were asked to pay only one yuan into an honesty box for the lunch between 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. that day.

Photo from Chinanews.com

The reserve sold 1,100 meals and received 1,167 yuan in the box.

"One yuan definitely can’t cover the cost," a staff member told Beijing Youth Daily.

Photo from Chinanews.com

Instead of making profits, the project was aimed at offering a better experience for tourists, while the reserve covered the extra cost of the ingredients itself.

Laojunshan Nature Reserve is known of filling up visitors in return for little money. It has a tradition of offering free bread, seasonal cakes and noodles during the holidays, though it has found that doing so leaves a lot of waste. It introduced the one-yuan charge as a way to prevent such behavior.