Great news for fast food lovers on the mainland. Lai See's favourite company, McDonald's is pushing ahead with plans to open 100 stores a year there. Reuters news agency tipped us off about this important item. Some other media organisations have ignored or underplayed this news and so Lai See has decided to look at it in great detail. Readers might recall McDonald's last week announced plans to close 175 stores and cut 400 to 600 jobs worldwide. Concerned about China, Reuters reporters called McDonald's Beijing office to be told: 'There has been no effect on our business . . . We are fully confident in McDonald's growth in China and will continue to develop our China business as planned.' The plan for 100 new stores each year was announced in September. The company now has more than 500 mainland outlets, up from 184 five years ago. Fuelling the demand for burgers and fries is a perception that a dinner beneath the Golden Arches is a Western-style treat, rather than a low-cost option. Prices are about the same as in Hong Kong, and so mainland customers are digging deeper into their incomes, relatively speaking, to munch on potato cakes and guzzle those delightful McDonald's flavoured ice shakes. Mainland customers are definitely in spending mode when it comes to dining out: The retail figures for last month show restaurant spending was up 17.7 per cent year on year to 48.8 billion yuan (about HK$45.75 billion). McDonald's sales are somewhere in there, but they wouldn't give them to us when we asked last night. Anyway, back in Hong Kong, McDonald's has come a long way since it opened its first store in Paterson Street, Causeway Bay, in 1975. Today, there are 158 SAR McDonald's employing more than 9,000 people. One of the smallest outlets is in Kowloon Park, a two-person kiosk which often has a long line of customers outside on the weekends. But not to worry, there is a full-size McDonald's a short walk away. If you live in Heng Fa Chuen, you are part of McDonald's history: your Big Mac and fries are cooked in McDonald's 11,000th restaurant in the world. Our nearly No 1 favourite McDonald's outlet is the BIG restaurant in Jakarta's Dunia Fantasi fun park in Indonesia. It's designed on a purple fun theme. But for sheer convenience, there can be no beating the McDonald's near our place, which is, well, our favourite. SAR specials: McDonald's offers the same basic menu around the world, but it also caters to the particular tastes of customers in different markets. Here are three products specially designed for its Hong Kong customers: The curry potato pie, shake shake fries (mix a salty sachet into a bag of fries) and red bean sundae. Reader Quiz: Which of these three specially designed products has Lai See tasted? Clue: We try to eat at a McDonald's at least once a week and our favourite meal is the salty De Luxe Breakfast No 5. Growing debate: Higher retail sales on the mainland last month - that's got to be good news, right? Well, we took a look at some official articles on the National Bureau of Statistics' Web site ( www.stats.gov.cn ) and we are not so sure. For those Lai See readers who did not notice, China's overall retail sales by value were up 9.4 per cent last month to 366.2 billion yuan. When we checked yesterday afternoon the stats.gov.cn Web site had two articles on the subject. One, as we expected, praised the growth in retail sales as a sign of economic health. But another, based on a survey of 700 consumers in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing, was critical of the rise of consumerism. Better to invest in the future of the nation as a whole, the writers said. Just shows - there is quite obviously plenty of room for differing views in a country as big as China. Graphic: whee15gbz