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A photo from B2C retail website Tmall.com shows the State Banquet package for New Year's Eve dinner.

State banquet for the common man

With the Spring Festival around the corner, many Chinese people have preordered items for the family reunion dinner on New Year's Eve. This year, some high-end choices usually reserved for state leaders are available to everyone for the all-important Spring Festival, reported thepaper.cn.

Diaoyutai Food and Biotechnology Co Ltd, a business set up by Diaoyutai State Guest House which entertains visiting foreign state leaders, announced on Dec 22 that it will sell state banquet dishes for New Year's Eve dinner on Tmall, a Chinese B2C online retail website. This is the first time the provider of state banquets has gone into retail.

On the menu of the state-level New Year package meal, there are famous dishes such as Buddha Jumps over the Wall, Huaiyang Lion's Head and Braised Pawns. And unsurprisingly, the state-level delicacy is not cheap: a set meal comprising of four dishes and one soup is priced at around 4,000 yuan ($617).

This year, only 6,000 sets of the New Year state banquet dinner are on sale. Because the banquet requires some assembly and is delivered via cold chain, it is only available for customers in Beijing and Tianjin.

A set of state banquet meal for New Year's Eve. [Photo/Tmall.com]

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