Yangcheng Evening News: Li Chunwei, the reporter, and Yue Xuan, the correspondent, reported that the flower market opened with the sound of gongs! The opening ceremony of the West Lake Flower Market in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou in 2023 was held in front of the main building of West Lake Road on the morning of the 19th. This year, some of the stalls in Yuexiu West Lake Flower Market, known as the “Centennial Flower Market”, were moved to Beijing Road, which has a thousand-year-old ancient road. The two cultural brands have joined forces to attract many citizens and tourists to punch in.
Yuexiu West Lake Flower Market is the most representative traditional flower market in Guangzhou. It has a profound historical and cultural heritage and carries the folk culture of Guangzhou and the memory of Guangzhou. This opening event will continue to show the cultural charm of the century-old flower market and the strong Guangfu customs, and strive to present the “fireworks” of the traditional flower market to the general public, and create a folk atmosphere for the Spring Festival with new vitality and new characteristics of the old city.
At the opening ceremony, the performance of the dance program “Ode to the Flower God” added to the festival atmosphere. At the scene, the “Jasmine Flower Goddess”, surrounded by the flower fairies, sent flowers representing blessings to the citizens, implying a beautiful and prosperous life in the coming year. It is said that “Ode to the Flower God” is a traditional program of the opening ceremony of Yuexiu West Lake Flower Market. Since the introduction of jasmine from the Western Regions to Guangzhou 2000 years ago, “Ode to the Flower God” has always been one of the most beautiful flower memories in Guangzhou.
This year, the Yuexiu traditional West Lake flower market lasted for three days. From January 19 to 21, more than 120 stalls were set up in Beijing Road (the section from the Provincial Department of Finance to Taikang), West Lake Road (the section from Education Road to Beijing), and Chenghuang Temple Square in many categories, including New Year flowers, New Year goods, handicrafts, intangible cultural heritage display, public welfare, counterpart support, etc. Intangible cultural heritage stalls display and sell Guangdong’s local Chinese intangible cultural heritage and festival cultural and creative products, including lion, olive carving, cake printing, bronze, palace lantern, bonsai, etc., to further promote Lingnan Guangfu culture; The eastern and western regions have assisted in the revitalization of rural areas in Zhenning, Guizhou, bringing a variety of special agricultural products with Qiannan characteristics, such as “Zhenning Bee Sugar Plum”. Through regional cooperation and complementary advantages, the channels for farmers to increase income and become rich have been broadened.
The flower market sets up the main building in the West Lake Road Square. The design concept of the main building comes from the first floor of Lingnan. The first floor of Lingnan is located in the Five Immortals Temple, Huifu West Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City. It is the only existing Ming Dynasty city building in Guangzhou. Together with Zhenhai Building, it is called the “double wall” of Ming Dynasty architecture. The building is solemn, magnificent, simple and generous, which means the new year is prosperous.
This year, Yuexiu District has also set up 10 flower market landscapes in Xihu Road Square, Beijing Road Tonghu Dilou and other places. Among them, in front of the main building of the flower market, the mother rabbit holding the birthday peach with four little rabbits paid a New Year’s greetings to everyone, lifelike and cute. Located at the intersection of the two main streets of the Beijing Road and the West Lake Road flower market, the copper pot dripping glass flower scene adopts the setting method of integrating the space shape rabbit ornaments of the Yuan Universe flower market with the three-dimensional ring flowers. Peach flowers, traveller’s banana, marigold, Phalaenopsis and other New Year’s Eve flowers compete with each other, showing the integration and unity of modern elements and flower landscape.
In addition to the West Lake Flower Market, Yuexiu District also set up 20 flower market sub-venues in each street community to facilitate citizens to visit the Spring Festival Flower Market at their home.