Compiled by BEH YUEN HUI, LEONG SHU YIN and R. ARAVINTHAN
CANNED abalone is cheaper than festive cookies, mandarin oranges and luncheon meat this Chinese New Year.
Sin Chew Jit Poh reported that the seafood, once considered a luxury item, is priced from as low as RM9.90 per can, depending on the size of the abalone.
Although there are abalone from various countries, most of these cheaper canned products come from China – the biggest country in abalone farming.
Overproduction resulting from excessive farming has caused the price of canned abalone to drop by 15% to 20% this year, according to traders and wholesalers.
The prices of wild abalone and those produced by big companies have also dropped.
Taking one particular brand as an example, a trader said one can of the wild abalone could be bought at slightly over RM500.
“It was selling at more than RM800 per can in 2023.”
> The daily also reported that Ah Cai, the auspicious pixiu statue in Melaka, has made it into the Asean Records as the largest in the region.
Standing at 5.12m tall and weighing 688kg, the statue has been placed at the entrance of Jonker Street to welcome good fortune in the Year of the Snake.
Pixiu is said to eat jewellery and gold but has no anus. Thus, the wealth is kept within.
Legend says that the pixiu once defecated all over the palace of the Jade Emperor, who was furious and sealed its anus.
> According to major Chinese dailies, Hong Kong actor Sean Lau Ching-wan revealed that his wife Amy Kwok thought he wanted to borrow money when he asked her out for the first time.
“She asked me why and thought that I needed to borrow money,” he said in an interview.
“Later, we acted together in The Greed of Man (in 1992) but I had to keep my feelings to myself to focus on the TV series. We only started dating after that,” he said.
The couple married in 1998.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.
