While crab dishes are a traditional must-have for many during the Lunar New Year, which falls at the end of January this year, Fang Yuan, a self-described crab lover, had her last morsel in early December after her only two trusted online sellers wrapped up their operations of the year.

“Most stores had quality issues or shortchanged the weight to some extent,” says the 32-year-old from Nanjing, capital of eastern China’s Jiangsu province, who has had a hard time buying her favorite food—Chinese mitten crabs, also known as hairy crabs, or 大闸蟹 (dàzháxiè)—online. Even buying from high-rated sellers recommended by the platforms had been a hit-and-miss experience. Fang recalls that once the string used to tie the crabs accounted for over one-third of their advertised weight; another time, all the crabs were dead, and therefore inedible, upon arrival.

Fang, who requested the use of a pseudonym for this piece, is not alone in her disappointment. Complaints and reports of scams related to this delicacy have been on the rise, particularly when it comes to crabs cultivated in the renowned Yangcheng Lake, which can cost more than 300 yuan apiece. Some consumers have even dubbed online purchases of Chinese mitten crabs a form of “gambling,” where the quality of the specimens they receive largely relies on luck. As demand for the delicacy continues to grow in the country, customers are forced to become more discerning, while merchants, who strive to make an honest living, work hard to shed their reputation as scammers.

For centuries, countless literati and foodies have sung their fondness and praises for river crabs, mainly grown in the rivers, estuaries, and other waters of the Yangtze River Delta in Jiangsu, Anhui, and Hubei provinces. Renowned 8th-century poet Li Bai (李白) compared crabs to a golden elixir (蟹螯即金液) in his “Drinking Alone Under the Moonlight,” while Song dynasty (960 – 1279) literati Xu Sidao (徐似道) wrote: “One betrays their eyes for not going to Lu Mountain, and their stomach for not eating crabs.” Modern-day scholar and poet Tang Guoli, who moved to Suzhou in the 1930s from her home in neighboring Zhejiang province, once mused: “Why should one live in Suzhou if not for the delicious Yangcheng Lake crabs.”

Once a delicacy reserved for the rich and noble, hairy crabs, whose Chinese name dazhaxie (“big weir crab”) is believed to reference the traditional bamboo fence used to catch them, have only grown in popularity in recent decades, thanks to canny promotions and local governments’ nurturing of the industry.

“A 3-liang (150 gram) female crab or 4-liang male cost around 50 kuai, which [over two decades ago] was a lot. Why not buy some meat instead?” Lin Xinyang, a hairy crab business owner from Nanjing, tells TWOC, recalling how a few yuan could buy a substantial amount of pork back then. Lin, who requested to remain anonymous, says his father began farming hairy crabs in nearby Gucheng Lake—now famous for the delicacy—around this time, citing the area’s fertile land, profitability, and the support of the local government as key reasons for getting into the business. And despite prices fluctuating little for premium crabs since Lin’s father’s time in the business, “It’s now common for rural households to consume them,” says the 37-year-old, though he admits that buyers mostly consist of Nanjing locals and those from economically developed regions.

According to the Intelligence Research Center, an industry research and analysis platform, the country’s annual output of hairy crabs reached 839,000 tons in 2023, a 12 percent increase since 2016. In that same year, the wholesale market was valued at over 30 billion yuan, with more than 7 billion Chinese mitten crabs—an average of five per person per year—consumed in the country. Meanwhile, a 2023 report by food delivery app Meituan shows that the top five areas for crab consumption were Zhejiang, Guangdong, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Beijing, five of China’s top six richest regions as ranked by per capita GDP.

In the eyes of Fang and many devotees, no other food can compete with these crabs: Their meat is sweet and delicate, and the golden milt of the males and the bright orange roe of the females both boast a rich and umami flavor. Their preparation—steaming for approximately 20 minutes—couldn’t be simpler, requiring no cooking skills or seasoning. The crabs’ exceptional flavor depends almost entirely on one key factor: They must be alive and healthy when they go into the pot. “I used to steam hairy crabs with some ginger and green onion, and then dip them in yellow rice wine, but I later found that they taste better steamed and eaten without anything,” Chen Hongjun, a resident of Jiangsu’s Kunshan, tells TWOC.

Over the past several years, devouring this deeply satisfying dish while watching TV has been a weekly highlight for Fang. She does so throughout the crab season, which typically spans from October to December. Ever since returning to China from the US in 2018 after six years of studying abroad, she has relied on convenient and cost-efficient online shopping channels to source her crab. Rather than buying them at her local market for around 20 or 30 yuan apiece from unspecified sources, she prefers to order from an online shop selling crabs from Gucheng Lake at a lower price, even though the crabs may be damaged, missing some legs or claws.

But for Fang, finding reliable sellers whose products match the advertised quality and weight is arduous and time-consuming. She cannot recall how many shops she tried on e-commerce platforms like Taobao and Tmall, as well as the messaging app WeChat, before eventually settling on two sellers on the popular lifestyle app Xiaohongshu.

Fang is not the only one struggling to navigate the murky waters of online crab sales. On Black Cat, a consumer complaint platform, the search of the term dazhaxie returns over 5,000 results, many relating to the best-known and most expensive hairy crabs cultivated in Yangcheng Lake, neighboring Jiangsu’s Suzhou and Kunshan cities. “The price of crabs can differ by multiples, and online buyers often pay more attention to price and size over quality…They don’t know how murky the business is,” crab business owner Lin observes.

Xie Dandan, a seller whose family runs a fenced area of 20 mu (about 1.3 hectares) in Yangcheng Lake and another 200-mu pond, agrees that many consumers are susceptible to being cheated. “Many shops online claim that they sell Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs, but consumers often don’t know how to identify whether they’re genuine or fake,” she says.

One way consumers are supposedly protected from such fraud is via “crab buttons,” plastic tags attached to the crab that feature an exclusive QR code indicating their origin. Regarded as a crab’s official stamp of provenance, the buttons for crabs cultivated in Yangcheng Lake are exclusively issued by the Suzhou Yangcheng Lake Crab Association.

Despite this measure, counterfeit crab buttons and other issues—ranging from poor product quality to bad customer service—have significantly damaged the industry’s credibility. One particularly troubling practice is treating crabs like futures. While crabs are typically seasonal, they can be sold year-round with “crab cards,” which serve as proof that the crabs paid for in advance will be delivered during the harvest season. Some cards even have a validity period of several years.

An industry insider told Portrait magazine that many companies routinely oversell crab cards on e-commerce platforms, yet fulfilling less than 30 percent of the orders.

One such brand, Xietaitai, was removed from the organization’s list of trusted Yangcheng producers last June after customer complaints emerged. These complaints ranged from the refusal to honor crab cards—often gifted by enterprises and individuals to business clients during the Mid-Autumn Festival—to under-weighing its goods and engaging in false advertising.

Selling crabs that have not yet been produced carries certain risks. In 2024, due to a long, scorching summer and several typhoons that hit the area, crab production there dropped by about 10 percent compared to the previous year. Crab production may further drop due to the effects of rising temperatures caused by climate change. “The crabs wouldn’t eat and can’t survive the heat,” says Lin, explaining that such conditions can reduce a crab’s chance of survival by nearly half, from 60 percent to 30 percent in a given season.

Environmental efforts to preserve water quality have also led to a reduction in available space for lake crab farming. Over the years, local governments have taken steps to remove fenced areas in well-known crab-farming lakes, including Gucheng Lake and Taihu Lake, and have imposed bans on crab farming in protected lakes. As a result, farmers have increasingly turned to pond farming. This has further fueled the popularity of Yangcheng Lake crabs due to their rarity, with nearly 16,000 mu of fenced farms and another 65,700 mu farming ponds still existent in the area.

The “genuine” Yangcheng Lake crabs are also rumored to be reserved for the privileged or high-end restaurants, such as those in Hong Kong or overseas, making it unlikely for ordinary consumers to purchase them. While it is difficult to verify the credibility of this claim, such public perceptions are already creating challenges for crab farmers.

Xie turned to Xiaohongshu to explain to her customers last September that pond-farmed crabs—highly standardized and regulated by the local government—closely resemble their lake-farmed counterparts. Both are cultivated using water from Yangcheng Lake and require the same food and farming techniques. However, to the trained palate, they may differ slightly in taste and mouthfeel, as in-pond crabs tend to be fattier due to more concentrated farming.

“If you want a fancier gift or have enough money, buy lake-farmed crabs [which cost one and a half to twice as much] from trusted farmers. Or try pond-farmed crabs for your own family’s consumption,” she adds, attempting to dismiss negative stereotypes leveled at pond-farmed crabs.

The post is just one of many that Xie, who has sold crabs on Xiaohongshu since 2021, shared in an effort to battle negative public opinions associated with Yangcheng Lake crabs. She now uploads daily farming scenes on social media—from the release of small crabs in the first lunar month to showing them feeding mainly on fish, corn, and pumpkin in the spring and summer months and their eventual maturity and the beginning of sales in autumn. She also shares tips on distinguishing quality crabs from subpar ones, recognizing genuine Yangcheng Lake crab “buttons,” and how to verify credible crab cards.

She tells TWOC that in 2024, the Yangcheng Lake Crab Association upgraded their certifications and buttons, each featuring QR codes to verify the company’s information, and issued different versions for lake-farmed and pond-farmed crabs. In addition, association members are only permitted 600 buttons on the first day of the official fishing season for each mu of farming area to reduce the likelihood of them being sold to non-licensed sellers.

Despite such efforts, consumers like Fang remain wary of the legitimacy of goods entering the market. “[Distributors] may be able to buy real buttons [to disguise fake products],” Fang points out. She also doesn’t think buying hyped Yangcheng Lake crabs is necessary, especially when they may still turn out to be fake. “For me, local Nanjing crabs are good enough.”