What the mainland media say, December 9, 2012

Fine food often does not come cheap. Take a delicacy such as Xinjiang matang, a dense, cake-like confection that Uygurs make almost entirely of walnuts and other nuts. A single slab of the stuff can cost as much as 6,000 yuan (HK$7,450).

Yet many were astonished when police in Yueyang, Hunan province, ordered a Han villager to pay a whopping 160,000 yuan to replace matang he destroyed during a brawl with food vendors from Xinjiang.

The extraordinary compensation triggered an uproar over the way police handled the case, with some questioning whether authorities had sacrificed the rule of law to avoid inflaming ethnic tension.

Citing a post on the Yueyang police's official Sina Weibo, the online edition of the People's Daily reported that the villager was ordered to pay the vendors 200,000 yuan in total, including 40,000 yuan to cover several motorcycles and injuries to two workers. The rest? Matang. The police did not say just how much matang was destroyed.

Not surprisingly, the huge payout drew a torrent of reaction in the media and widespread mockery on microblogs, where commenters marvelled at the jaw-dropping value now assigned to a cake full of nuts.

"This is an era in which someone driving a Porsche will flee after hitting a flatbed cart loaded with Xinjiang matang," wrote one. "From now on, Xinjiang matang is the choice if someone wants to bribe an official," wrote another.