With the Spring Festival or the Chinese Lunar New Year approaching, a bevy of people recently swarmed into the Lingnan Flower Market in Guangzhou City, south China's Guangdong Province, to buy flowers for home decoration.

Chinese people call flowers that are sold around the Spring Festival "the New Year flowers", which often have auspicious colors, such as purple and red, and feature gorgeous appearances.
In the Lingnan Flower Market, one of the largest in Guangzhou, there is a number of shops or stalls selling a diversity of colorful flowers, including little daisies and butterfly orchids.
"These flowers are liked by children, and they will make our home more beautiful. The New Year flowers are cheap now, but their prices may go up when the Spring Festival comes," said a customer surnamed Lin.
Some flowers remain very popular among customers, while there are flowers that have seen a drop in prices due to various factors, according to a shop owner.
"In the Lingnan area, the popular New Year flowers are butterfly orchids and holly trees with bright red berries. The prices of holly trees have dipped this year because of excessive supply in the market. In general, the wholesale price of a pot of holly tree has decreased by 20 to 30 yuan (about 2.8 to 4.2 U.S. dollars)," said a shop owner surnamed Huang.
As the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year is the Year of the Loong, widely known as the Chinese dragon, the dragon orchids have sold very well in the flower market.
"As the Year of the Loong is coming, many people have booked the dragon orchids. The flower's petal is about three centimeters longer than other varieties of orchids. Besides, it has a particularly long flowering period, so it is more expensive than other varieties. We sell orchid to many other parts of China, including Hubei and Sichuan provinces, but mainly in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao," said a shop owner surnamed Fang.
Known as a flower city, Guangzhou is an important production base for foliage plants and potted flowers in China. The city is expected to supply about 15 million pots of New Year flowers around the 2024 Spring Festival.