A staff member promotes ham mooncakes via livestreaming at a food company in Xuanwei City, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Sept. 3, 2026. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo)
In Kunming this Mid-Autumn season, black truffle has found its way into one of China's most traditional festive foods: the mooncake. At a local bakery, small mooncakes filled with Yunnan ham and black truffle are among this year's seasonal offerings.
The pairing reflects a broader shift in China's food market. Some ingredients long associated with high prices and fine dining are reaching wider markets as production expands, processors develop new products and logistics improve.
Foie gras offers one example. In the late 1980s, Linqu County in east China's Shandong Province introduced Landes geese from France. More than three decades later, the county has built an industry spanning breeding, farming, processing, sales and research and development.
Linqu now sends about 5 million Landes geese to market each year and produces more than 5,000 tonnes of foie gras, accounting for about 20 percent of the global market. Its foie gras products are sold in markets including Europe and Southeast Asia.
Agricultural exchanges between China and other parts of the world date back more than 2,000 years. Crops including grapes and pomegranates came to China via the ancient Silk Road and became part of everyday diets.
Today, olive trees native to the Mediterranean grow in Longnan in northwest China's Gansu Province. Yunnan, meanwhile, has about 296,400 hectares under macadamia cultivation, according to provincial forestry authorities.
"More and more high-quality, distinctive agricultural products from China are reaching global markets, making such ingredients more accessible to consumers around the world," said Wei Wanqing, a professor at South China Agricultural University.
Yunnan is also one of China's core truffle-producing regions, with truffles growing wild in the province. Processing and market development have broadened the range of products made from the ingredient.
Local businesses have developed products including truffle sauce, mooncakes, chocolate and sausages. Yunnan truffles have also been exported to France, Germany and the United Arab Emirates.
"The increase in the volume of China's agricultural exports and the improvement in their quality have benefited from the development of distinctive product categories and the expansion of emerging markets," said Lin Faqin, a professor at China Agricultural University.
China's agricultural exports reached 52.97 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of 2026, up 7.4 percent year on year, customs data showed.
For highly perishable foods, reaching the market quickly can be as important as production itself.
"Fresh wild mushroom exports are highly time-sensitive. Exporting them even one day earlier means greater freshness and stronger market competitiveness," said Guo Jinyun, general manager of a local food company in Shangri-La.
Logistics support for the matsutake trade continues to expand. At a matsutake industry event in Shangri-La in July, SF Express said it would operate more than 100 all-cargo flights this year. It also said products could be shipped directly overseas from Shangri-La, Kunming and Lijiang, with door-to-port delivery to overseas markets including Incheon in the Republic of Korea and Singapore taking as little as 28 hours.
Improved transport links are also widening the reach of other agricultural products. Tongnan District in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality now exports lemons to nearly 40 countries and regions, according to Chongqing agricultural authorities.
The New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor has helped connect producers in western China with overseas markets. The network gained a major new link this month when the 134.2-km Pinglu Canal in Guangxi opened to navigation.
Connecting the Xijiang River system with the Beibu Gulf, the canal gives cargo from southwest China a more direct water route to the sea. It can shorten the inland water journey for freight between southwest China and ASEAN by more than 560 km and reduce overall logistics costs by 18 to 30 percent compared with traditional routes.
"Yunnan truffles have evolved from wild mountain fungi into a local specialty favored by consumers at home and abroad. The change has been driven by evolving consumer preferences in China and advances in agricultural science and technology," said Zhao Yongchang, a researcher at the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
