Yunnan gains consumptive momentum in spring

Tea garden in Lincang city's Fengqing county [Photo/Yunnan Daily]

Yunnan's spring features a seasonal feast. 

As new buds burst into green, April marks the busiest time for spring tea picking in Yunnan. In He Kai village, Yunnan's Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture, over 16,000 mu (around 1,067 hectares) of ancient tea gardens blanket the hills in lush green, with the fragrance of tea filling the air as the first batch of spring tea is harvested.

In Lincang city's Fengqing county, known as the "hometown of Yunnan red tea," tea picking is in full swing across 516,000 mu (34,400 hectares) of tea gardens.

In the ancient tea gardens of the Gaoshan village in Xishuangbanna's Mengla county, beautiful songs of the Yi ethnic group echo through the hills. Early in the morning, tea pickers set off with their tea bags, quickly filling them with tender tea leaves, their faces beaming with the joy of harvest. 

"I have over 20 mu (1.3 hectares) of ancient tea trees. Recently, my family and I have been busy picking spring tea. There are more and more guests these years, and the tea price has also risen, making our life better year after year," said tea farmer Yang Fachang from Gaoshan village.

Since spring, a wide variety of edible flowers has hit the "internet-famous" Kunming Zhuanxin wet market, attracting food lovers from all around. According to the market manager, there are over 600 stalls, and the average daily visitor volume on weekends since March has remained at around 500,000 to 600,000.

In Yunnan, flowers mean plantation, sightseeing, decoration, and food, illustrating a many-splendored local life.

In the Chinese market, seven of every ten fresh-cut flowers come from Yunnan's capital, Kunming. This spring, at Kunming's Dounan Flower Market, Asia's largest fresh-cut flower market, many tourists wear flower crowns and take bouquets, bringing "spring" home with them. 

According to the Dounan branch of SF Express in Yunnan, the company's flower transportation volume has surpassed 26,800 tons this year, with total shipments growing by more than 25% over the same period last year.

Source: Yunnan Daily; trans-editing by Guo Yao