Established in 1998, the Dounan Flower Market in Kunming, the capital city of southwest China's Yunnan Province, is one of the largest in the world. More than 1,600 varieties of flowers go on sale here every day.

The market is divided into a retail session and a wholesale session. Each night, thousands of wholesalers and buyers from across the country gather here, and the transactions can last until midnight.

In 2018, about seven billion fresh-cut flowers were sold here, with revenues reaching around 822 million U.S. dollars. This occupied 70 percent of the total market share in China. With the city’s improving logistics system, the flowers were exported to more than 50 countries and regions.

In 2002, the market adopted an auction system similar to that in the Netherlands – starting form a higher asking price and bidding for a lower price. Each deal is usually settled within seconds.

Today, the market has become a cluster for various related industries. Apart from the sale of fresh-cut flowers, businesses on seedballs and seedlings, greenhouse facilities, flower arranging and wedding flower service also boom, creating some one million jobs.

Now, Yunnan is stepping up the construction of the traffic network linking neighboring Southeast Asian countries, with exports expected to increase in the years to come.

(Cover photo by CGTN, font designed by Jia Jieqiong.)