With the Chinese New Year fast approaching, festive decorations featuring mythical dragons are quickly gaining popularity, as 2024 marks the Year of the Loong on the Chinese lunar calendar.

The Spring Festival, also known as the Chinese New Year, is China's most important festival, celebrating the beginning of a new year on the country's traditional calendar. This year's Spring Festival falls on Feb 10.

The loong, or Chinese dragon, is the fifth animal in the Chinese zodiac cycle. It is a legendary creature believed to be the most auspicious of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs.

As the holiday season gets underway, dragon-shaped decorations have already become the top-selling products at Yiwu International Trade Market in Yiwu City, the world's largest wholesale market for daily commodities in east China’s Zhejiang Province.

Many merchants at the market reported order volumes for festive decorations this year that exceeded their expectations, and foreign trade orders have grown particularly fast.

"Business is particularly booming this year. The products with loong patterns are the best sellers," said Lyu Weichao, a merchant.

Meanwhile, many upstream festive decoration producers in Yiwu are still busy handling a steady stream of orders. At one of these companies, even the parking area has been converted into a temporary storage zone for merchandise.

"This area used to be a parking lot. However, due to the increased number of commodities, products are packed directly on the ground after arriving from the packaging point. The order volume this year is relatively large," said Gan Hui, head of the firm.

By incorporating of Chinese zodiac culture in product design, many enterprises in the decoration manufacturing industry have witnessed a growth of over 20 percent in both domestic and international trade orders.

In the Yuxian County, Hebei Province, paper-cutting artisans are busy carving and coloring Yuxian paper-cuttings, a craft that has been recognized as a national-level intangible cultural heritage and boasts a history stretching back further than the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The art form developed from the tradition of hanging up paper-cuts to bring good fortune to the family and decorate windows.

In contrast to many other paper-cutting techniques, which mainly use scissors, Yuxian artisans use a special carving technique that involves drawing patterns on a piece of rice paper and carving along the lines with a sharp, pointy tool.

Now, the exquisite handicraft is trending in more than 100 countries and regions, including major markets like the United States, Japan, and Germany.

Another popular loong-decorated product this year are ornamental lanterns, giving rise to a busy production season in the lantern factories of Zibo City in east China's Shandong Province. Since September last year, demand for dragon-shaped lanterns has been steadily increasing with a significant rise in overseas orders from South Korea, Malaysia and elsewhere.