ZCZC
BSS-05
FLOWERS-KUNMING-CITY
Kunming: The city of flowers
AKM Kamal Uddin Chowdhury back from Kunming
DHAKA, July 6, 2018 (BSS) – Flower is a symbol of peace and beauty. A
touch of flower makes one’s mind fresh and joyful. A house, a village or a
city becomes well-decorated if there is a flower garden.
Let us imagine such a city, which is located at an elevation of 1,890
metres on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau with low latitude and high elevation. If
you have an aerial view of Kunming, the capital city of the Chinese Yunnan
providence, it will look like a well-decorated mega flower garden.
The city is known as ‘Spring City’ due to its mild climate and lack of
scorching summer and severe winter. Kunming is rich in flower resources and
that is why a huge number of tourists visit the city every year to enjoy its
beauty.
This correspondent with three other journalists recently visited
Kunming. When they landed in the city, flowers welcomed them with their
charming smell. They stood for a moment and thought where they were. “Is it a
city or flower garden?”
Wang Yi, editor of the Yunnan Branch in the China News Service, brought
him to the reality from the imagination. “Favorable climatic and geographical
conditions make Kunming as a city of flowers. So Yunnan has developed as the
largest flower export-base in Asia,” Wang Yi said.
During his recent visit to the Dounan Flower Market, the largest flower
market in China, this correspondent found that many people were busy in
processing flowers. These flowers would be exported abroad.
Dounan is one of the four main flower production bases in China. After
more than 30 years of development, Dounan flowers now have a market share of
over 70 percent for fresh-cut flower sold in big and medium sized cities
across China.
Talking to BSS, a senior official of the Dounan Flower Industry Group
said they are collecting flowers through 80 farmers’ agencies. The collection
of flowers remain same all around the year as the climate of Kunming is
favourable for producing flowers, he added.
He said flowers from Dounan are being exported to over 50 countries and
regions in South Asia and Southeast Asia, ranking first in flower trade in
China for 20 consecutive years.
“Dounan has already become a wind indicator for market and a barometre
for prices of fresh-cut flowers in China and the Southeast Asia, with
outstanding industrial advantage,” he said.
In 2017, about 7,634 million fresh-cut flowers were traded in Dounan,
making a sale amount of 6,382 billion yuan and a tax payment of 113.866
million yuan. Comparing to 2016, the sale amount of flowers increased by 8.26
percent while the transaction by 15.49 percent.
More than 20 big companies like Yunnan Airlines purchase flowers from
Dounan Flower Market on a large scale, and millions of flowers are being
airlifted daily to over 10 cities of China, including Beijing, and many
countries like Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand.
There are over 500 flower shops in the Trading Hall of the market, where
one can see local flower varieties such as rose and water lily. S/he can also
enjoy the beauty of exotic flowers like moth orchids, forget-me-nots, African
daisies, open-herding and carnations.
BSS/SPL/KUC/MRI/1212 hrs