"World Chocolate Wonderland" Consists Of Miniature Terracotta Army, Chocolate Bricks And White Chocolate Mortar#
Although chocolate has only been available in mainland China for a few short decades, and still hasn't become readily available in more remote areas, consumption has grown gradually in the last decade or so as companies have invested more into factories and distribution and heavily promoted their products. However, chocolate consumption remains miniscule in China in comparison to Western markets. Recently, Jing Daily reviewed a book on just this topic, Chocolate Fortunes by Lawrence Allen, which detailed the difficulties encountered by the world's "Big Five" chocolate producers as they struggled to crack the ill-defined and fragmented mainland market against all odds in the 1980s.
As we wrote in our review, Allen's book includes insights that can only be gained "on the ground" in China, such as the section in which Allen calls attention to the fact that
chocolate, as a foreign product in every sense of the word, is not a natural fit for the China market. As chocolate producers soon found after their arrival in the Mainland in the early 1980s, chocolate — much like all rich and sugary foods — is considered “heaty” in traditional Chinese pharmacognosy terms, and thus for many Chinese is considered something to only be consumed in the colder months.
Perhaps spurred on by the Chinese preference for chocolate in the winter months leading up to the Lunar New Year celebration, a team of confectioners has constructed a 10 meter-long replica of the Great Wall of China completely out of chocolate. Built from bricks of dark chocolate, held together by white chocolate mortar, the "Great Wall of Chocolate" also includes 560 miniature chocolate "Terracotta" warriors. As the following video shows, the so-called "World Chocolate Wonderland" is being created in the hopes of increasing chocolate consumption in the mainland: