During the last weekend before this year's Mid-Autumn Festival, one of Emperor Sovereign Food (Zhongshan) Co's mooncake production lines was still operating to fulfill the hand-made mooncake orders, and this is the only manual production line the company keeps for hand-made mooncakes.

"To produce better mooncakes, we retain this manual production line," said Yang Tian, the factory manager. "Mooncake is a type of food implanted with emotion. People usually place their feelings in a mooncake during Mid-Autumn Festival reunion. The mooncakes we make are to live up to these distinctive feelings."

It is introduced that an automatic production line of the company needs two operators, but a manual production line needs ten or more, with a 6:1 input-output ratio.

As an enterprise engaged in export business for over 30 years, Emperor Sovereign has a thorough understanding of the demands at the overseas market. Mid-autumn mooncakes symbolize reunion and hometown, and Cantonese mooncakes are particularly important to overseas Chinese. In that case, the mooncake maker attaches great importance to the quality of its products and specially retain the manual production line.

"Mooncake is the food that can maintain people's relationships. We have special feelings for it, and the warmth of hand-made mooncakes is worth preserving," said Lai Li'e, vice general manager of Emperor Sovereign.