Besides mooncake, another common gift for the holiday, Yangcheng Lake crabs have begun to find their way to ordinary people's tables, not only to luxury banquets.

"I could only buy crabs to give my bosses, but not for my family because they were too expensive. But since the price has fallen, I decided to buy some and have a taste," a netizen wrote on the Internet.

Hidden gift-giving approach

Although the gift-giving market has been cooled down in some ways, there are still some hidden approaches. Anti-corruption experts warned that to be on the alert for new methods of corruption.

Some warehouses and courier companies, however, are much more busy than the street shops.

"Some people place orders on the Internet and leave the addresses of their 'friends'. So, no one would know what's in the packages or how much they are worth," said a tea shop owner, who declined to be named.

Although sales volume of high-end tea dropped a lot this year, it remains at a peak during this festival. The key in the trade is to "maintain" the relationships with your "customers", he said.

"Positive signs in the markets can reflect some progresses that achieved by the anticorruption campaign," said Wang Yukai, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance.

Wang said that "express-gifts" will bring new challenges for the anticorruption organizations because it is harder to detect.

"Although we have made some progress, new means appear to challenge anticorruption, which shows how difficult it is to fight corruption. We need to build a long-term anti-corruption mechanism with social supervision," Wang said.