Chow Sang Sang's gold falls to 1,249 yuan, footfall doubles
Chow Tai Fook reads 1,255 yuan a gram and Lao Miao 1,252, each more than 10% under the 25 August high, on 21jingji's figures. Showroom gold in Zhengzhou quoted 934 yuan.
By Carat Capital
What changed
Cheaper gold brought buyers. China's three big jewellery brands quoted near 1,250 yuan a gram on 2 October, more than 10% under their August highs. Shops in Changsha, Zhengzhou and Hangzhou reported holiday queues.
What it means
- If you sell gold jewellery: A lower gram price moved units, not margin; labour-fee discounts did the rest.
- If you price bullion: Bar and coin sales did not rise with the jewellery, on the same report.
- What this is not: A price floor. Half-hour swings of 10 yuan a gram were reported on the same day.
Key figures
| Chow Sang Sang, yuan a gram2 October, from 1,408 on 25 August | 1,249 |
|---|---|
| Chow Tai Fook, yuan a gramfrom 1,410 on 25 August | 1,255 |
| Lao Miao, yuan a gramfrom 1,407 on 25 August | 1,252 |
| Zhengzhou showroom jewellery gold1 October, before labour fees | 934 |
| Chow Sang Sang against its August highCarat Capital's division | 11.3% |
Source: 21jingji, published 2 October 2026 19:28 Beijing time, carrying National Business Daily and three regional outlets; page read direct, 38,036 bytes
Three counters, one level.
Near twelve-fifty. Chow Sang Sang read 1,249 yuan a gram against 1,408 on 25 August. Chow Tai Fook read 1,255 against 1,410, and Lao Miao 1,252 against 1,407.
The falls are stated. The source gives the declines in yuan as well as levels: 159 yuan for Chow Sang Sang and 155 each for the other two. All three exceed 10% of the August level.
| Brand | 25 August | 2 October | Fall, yuan | % of the high | % below |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chow Sang Sang | 1,408 | 1,249 | 159 | 88.7% | 11.3% |
| Chow Tai Fook | 1,410 | 1,255 | 155 | 89.0% | 11.0% |
| Lao Miao | 1,407 | 1,252 | 155 | 89.0% | 11.0% |
Notes on this table
The first four columns are published in 21jingji's own text and each figure was grepped in the saved bytes before being printed. The last two columns are Carat Capital's division, printed as a pair so the two readings cannot be confused: 1,249 over 1,408 is 88.7% of the August high, which is 11.3% below it. The source states only that all three falls exceed 10%, and all three do. These are brand counter prices for finished jewellery, which carry labour and brand charges, and they are not the same instrument as the Shanghai benchmark or a bar price. The 25 August level is described by the source as a near-three-month high, not an all-time high.
Shops report doubled traffic.
Changsha doubled. A Chow Sang Sang shop in Changsha reported sales recovering in the week before the holiday and first-day footfall doubling, with buyers assembling wedding sets.
Zhengzhou quoted 934. A Zhengzhou jewellery hall quoted showroom gold at 934 yuan a gram on 1 October, nearly 10 yuan lower on the day. National Day labour-fee discounts were added on top. Staff named buyers travelling from Qingdao.
Hangzhou posted 979. A noticeboard at Hangzhou's Baima jewellery market carried 999 fine gold at 979 yuan a gram and 9999 at 989. It was read on the morning of 1 October.
Bars did not follow.
Bars lagged jewellery. Staff said gold and silver bar sales had not risen in step with jewellery, citing volatility. Swings of 10 yuan a gram inside half an hour were reported, which is 0.8% of the counter level.
What to watch
- Next counter readingWhether the three brands hold near 1,250 yuan a gram once National Day labour-fee discounts end. The source publishes no end date for the discounts.
- 25 August 2026The reference level the three counters are measured against, at 1,408, 1,410 and 1,407 yuan a gram. A new high would reset every percentage above.
- 2026 full yearHSBC's cut average forecast of USD 4,490 an ounce, against the USD 4,139.80 close the tape carries for 2 October. Covered in the metals piece in this edition.
The story so far
Go deeper
What would change this call
A holiday that borrows from November. Every demand figure above is a shop-floor report during an eight-day public holiday with labour-fee discounts running, which is the single best week of the Chinese retail year to find a queue. Doubled footfall against an ordinary Tuesday is not evidence of a demand recovery; it is evidence of a holiday. The reading that would reverse the desk's view is a counter level holding near 1,250 yuan with footfall still elevated once the discounts come off, and the honest answer is that the source gives no date on which to test that.
What a brand counter price is
A Chinese brand gold counter price is the per-gram asking price a chain posts for finished jewellery, and it is not a bullion price. It is built from a reference gold price, which the brands reset daily and often intraday, plus a labour or craft charge that varies by piece and a brand premium. That is why the three brands in the table sit within 6 yuan of each other on 2 October and why the Zhengzhou showroom figure of 934 yuan and the Hangzhou market quotes of 979 and 989 yuan are all lower than the brand counters without contradicting them: those are different goods at a different point in the chain, raw fine gold rather than branded finished jewellery. It also explains why a labour-fee discount moves a buyer's bill without moving the posted gram price, and why bar sales can stay flat while jewellery sells, since a bar carries almost none of the charge that a discount can be cut from. For a reader pricing against these figures, the per-gram counter number is the headline a Chinese consumer sees, not a number anyone in the trade settles on.
Method
The source page was fetched with a browser identity and saved as raw bytes before any figure was written: 200, 38,036 bytes, with the publication timestamp '2026年10月02日 19:28' carried in the page's own text and attributed to National Business Daily. Every figure printed was grepped in those saved bytes, with hit counts: '1408' 1, '1249' 1, '1410' 1, '1255' 1, '1407' 1, '1252' 1, '159' 1, '155' 2, '1250' 1, '934' 2, '979' 1, '989' 1, and the source's own claim '超过10%' 1. One figure the page carries was refused: it gives spot gold at 4,184.596 dollars an ounce at the moment of filing, which is a reading from 07:28 New York time on 2 October and not the session's close. The tape's own figure for the completed 2 October session is 4,139.80, so printing the page's intraday number beside it would put two unlike readings on one surface. The percentage figures in the last two table columns are Carat Capital's arithmetic on the source's own levels, not the source's percentages, and the source states only that all three falls exceed 10%. The shop-floor reports are attributed in the source to three named regional outlets, Sanxiang City Express in Changsha, Dahe Daily in Zhengzhou and Zhejiang Economic Television in Hangzhou, and they are reported here as what those outlets described rather than as independently verified footfall. No footfall figure is published by any brand. ARCHIVE, periods on both sides: China's big-three gold counters, ours 2026-09-30 'twelve-forty-five-off-the-august-high' covers the 29 September session (Chow Sang Sang 1,245) | ours 2026-10-01 'twelve-sixty-two-and-a-flat-counter' covers the 30 September session (Chow Sang Sang 1,257, Chow Tai Fook 1,259, Lao Miao 1,242) | this item covers the 2 October session (1,249, 1,255, 1,252). DIFFERENT PERIOD, so ADVANCED, not a repeat. Both prior articles were opened and read, not counted. Neither carries the National Day demand response, the doubled-footfall report, the Zhengzhou showroom figure of 934 yuan or the Hangzhou market quotes, which is why the headline here is the demand rather than the percentage under the high, a framing this archive has now carried twice.