odd inflation

Why, in this time of stupid inflation, are big, brand-name companies able to cut the price of fruit juice drink?

And a related question: Why is it so damn near impossible to buy actual fruit juice in China? You know, the stuff that is simply 100% fruit juice, not a tiny bit of fruit juice mixed in a lot of water, sugar, artificial flavours, preservatives and other additives- and yes, I know that all the big companies make their “100% pure” fruit juice from reconstituted concentrate, and I can’t figure out why, I mean, surely it’s far more efficient to put the juice straight from the fruit into the bottles? Isn’t concentrating it then adding water again before you bottle it adding two unnecessary steps to the production process?

Anyway, twice in two weeks, at two separate supermarkets, I’ve bought large bottles of fruit drink bearing two big brands (I mean, they were of different brands, but both big ones) at prices much lower than I would’ve expected. The first was a 汇源/Huiyuan 2.5 litre bottle of kiwifruit “nectar” for about 11 kuai from the local Jingkelong. That’s only a couple of kuai more than a one litre carton of the same brand. And today, 乐天/Lotte, 3.75 litres, peach “juice drink”, 11.80 kuai, from the local Shouhang, and with similar price comparisons to one litre cartons…

And now, if only those supermarkets would sell something that could legally be labelled “juice”…. I’m not much of a fruit eater, but I do like to have fruit juice around.

Oh, and one thing that really annoys me about this inflation is that the necessary things, like food (apart from fruit drink, obviously) and housing, are getting more expensive, but the completely unnecessary luxuries, cars being the obvious example, are getting cheaper.

And prices are still being kept artificially low on things that really should be much more expensive- water and petrol being the two obvious examples.