Spring Welcoming Flower Market

133.Spring Welcoming Flower Market

Nominating Unit:City of Guangzhou

The Spring Welcoming Flower Market of Guangzhou, also known as the New Year Flower Fair, is a unique scenery of folk activities in Lingnan. It has become an integral part of the Spring Festival in Guangzhou. A saying goes like this “Visiting the Flower market, celebrating the Spring Festival”. Guangzhou is abundant in rainfalls. With trees and plants evergreen, the city is known as the “Flower City”. The perfect location and natural environment is good for the growth of the variety of flowers. According to The Tour in Nan Yue (the area of Guangdong) of Lu Jia in the early Han dynasty, at the time when Nan Yue established the capital in Guangzhou, it was already a place covered by all kinds of flowers.The exotic frangipani and jasmine from the west were also planted. At that time the Guangzhou women already knew how to “string flowers for accessories”.

People in Guangzhou loved flowers and grew flowers, which boosted the forming of the flower market, called the Flower Market. According to Lingwai Dai Da of Zhou Qufei in the 5th year of the Chun Xi period of the Southern Song Dynasty(1178 A.D.), Guangzhou was rich in Jasminum flowers. During the blooming time people “picked the flowers, placed them on otherbranches or bamboo filaments, and sold them in the market at a price of two wen per one.” This is the earliest record of Guangzhou flower market, which gave Guanzhou a name of “Kingdom of Jasmine”. Qu Dajun also wrote in his Guangdong Xin Yu that there was a jetty on the opposite bank of Wu Yang Men in the Ming dynasty, from which “flower vendors sail in town.” Pan Zhen Min, wrote as well in his Pei Shuzhai Shi Chao—Flower Songs, that “There is a flower market in Guangzhou in the evening, where lots of people are visiting for the whole night.” All of these show that the scale of Guangzhou flower market was large in ancient times, and formed a night market with a relatively fixed location. By the early 1960s’, the flower market was open on fixed days before the Spring Festival.The Spring Welcoming Flower Market is open once a year. Starting on Dec. 28th of the lunar calendar of the previous year, the maket closes on Jan. 1st of the lunar calendar of the new year. There’re eight markets for the fair in Guangzhou, which are scattered in Xihu of Yuexiu District, Jiaoyu Lu, Dashatou Sanma Lu of Yuexiu District, Liwan Beilu of Yuexiu District, Jiangnan Xilu of Haizhu District,Tianhe Sports Center,Dashadi of Huangpu District,Huadi of Fangcun Distirct and Xinshi of Baiyun Distirct respectively.(https://www.daowen.com)

There’re some standards for arranging the stalls. Generally speaking, there are flower archway, front section, middle section, and back section selling different kinds of flowers and goods in different sections. For example, bonsais are sold in the middle section, while goldfish andornamental fish are sold in the back section. According to the packaging, flowers in the fair are divided into three kinds, namely, Zhitou, Pentou and Sanhua. Zhitou mainly covers the peach flowers, salix argyracea flowers, bluebells and so on. Pentou refers to flowers like camellias, orchids, peony, Laurel, roses, etc. Sanhua mainly includes chrysanthemum, common night blooming cereus, Salix argyracea flowers, cockscomb and so on. Most of the people visiting the flower market generously purchase a wide variety of flowers. The history of Guangzhou Spring Welcoming Flower Market fully reflects the prosperity of flower growing and trading as well as the development of commodity economy in Guangzhou.

With more and more kinds of flowers involved, Guangzhou Flower Market is more diversified in forms, which reflects the compatibility of Lingnan culture. Besides, the market is closely related to people’s lives, integrating the tradition of “Jiang Yitou” (means attaching importance to the symbolic meaning) of Guangzhou people, forming their own unique language of flowers. For example, the kumquat is the most popular plant in Guangzhou, because in Cantonese the pronunciation of it is similar to “Ji” (means lucky). People like to buy one bonsai of kumquat for bringing good luck to the family. Meanwhile, people buy peach flowers for realizing their ambitions or having good luck for romance; while daffodils symbolize wealth and fortune. Moreover, the “flower market literature” is also developed , which is of unique charm and great value for the research on history, culture and literature.

In recent years, with the economic development and social changes, compared with the traditional ones, the modern Spring Welcoming Flower Market has developed in a larger scale with a rich variety of flowers. However, the traditional flavor has been weakening. The annual cost on labour, material and finance for the organization is too high which has somehow become a burden for the government and thus the Flower Market is unprofitable. Therefore, it is in urgent need to enhance efforts to protect and support it.