Residents and tourists in Taiyuan City, north China's Shanxi Province, have shown great passion in purchasing aged vinegar, one of the local specialties, following the custom of pickling garlic with vinegar on Laba Festival.
The Laba Festival, observed on the eighth day of the 12th month in the lunar Chinese calendar, serves as a prelude to the Chinese Lunar New Year. This year, the festival falls on Monday, marking the start of the month-long festivities leading up to the Spring Festival. At a vinegar shop in Yingze District, Taiyuan, people line up early in the morning to buy vinegar, despite the cold weather. Many people came with their own buckets, jugs, and other containers. In addition to local residents, many tourists from across the country also joined the queue.
"We love this vinegar, so we come to buy some every year," said a local resident.
Inside the shop, clerks used tubes to pour steaming hot vinegar into containers, filling the shop with a rich aroma. Hu Xiaorong, manager of the shop, said that in addition to brisk offline sales, online sales are also steadily increasing.
"More people are queuing than in previous years, and the daily sales of (aged vinegar) are more than 10 tons, showing an upward trend. Among them, online sales increased by more than 10 percent compared with the same period last year," Hu said.
People queuing for vinegar in Shanxi in preparation for Laba Festival
