Jia Yue, age 23, paid her 100-yuan bill for her dinner in an elegant Shanghai restaurant in central Beijing, along with two colleagues.

"We go Dutch, but it still costs nearly one-day's salary," she said.

Thanks to the generous clients such as Yue, Chinese restaurant are expecting a good year after vital damage caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic last year and bird flu earlier this year.

"Chinese catering industry was expected to record an annual revenue of 730 billion yuan (88.27 billion US dollars) in 2004, up about 20 percent year on year," said a report issued by the Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday.

In the January-October period, China's restaurant earned a total income of 596.7 billion yuan, up 22.3 percent over the same period last year and accounted for 13.7 percent of the country's total retail sales, the report noted.

In October alone, the industry's sales volume hit 72.6 billion yuan, up 18.5 percent year on year. This is 4.3 percentage points higher than the average growth of the total retail sales, it said.

The fast growth in the first 10 month, especially in the latest several months, indicated a rebounding demand and market confidence, the report said, noting a higher growth is expected in November and December.

Due to the impact of SARS, the Chinese catering trade were nearly frozen in the first half of 2003. The bird flu also hindered the sector's recovery in the first half this year.

The sales volume of the industry was 606.6 billion yuan (73 billion US dollars) last year, up 11.6 percent year on year.

"I cannot offer to come to this expensive restaurant daily, however, I might choose some other restaurants with various taste rather than cooking by myself," Yue said.