Chinese embrace spring with the taste of the season

Every year Chinese people celebrate spring with the taste of the season. 

Since before the Qingming Festival, which fell on April 4 this year, seeking out and enjoying fresh seasonal spring foods have been prevalent in the country.

According to data from China's e-commerce platform Meituan, in the first two days of the three-day Qingming Festival holidays, the number of searches related to spring vegetables increased by 40 percent compared to the same period in 2023.

For people in the areas south of the Yangtze River, qingtuan, a traditional Chinese snack made of glutinous rice mixed with wormwood juice or barley grass and red bean stuffing, is the taste of spring. 

In the week before the Qingming Festival, the average daily amount of qingtuan orders increased by nearly 40 percent year on year, with qingtuan produced in east China's Fujian and Zhejiang provinces sold as far as northeast China's Harbin, according to data from Douyin, China's short-video and e-commerce platform.

Spring tea is a long-awaited messenger of the new year. It usually refers to the tea picked before the end of May. 

This year, the demand for spring tea has increased. Douyin's data shows that the average daily amount of spring tea orders increased by more than 50 percent year on year in the week before the Qingming Festival. Consumers from east China's Jiangsu, Shandong and Anhui provinces are the main buyers of spring tea this year.

In the past week, the volume of spring foods, including pea seedlings, shepherd's purse and river snails, transported through the cold chain stood out among the many fresh spring foods. 

According to Yunmanman, a Chinese online logistics firm, the volume of shepherd's purse and river snails both nearly doubled in the past week compared with the same period last year, and the volume of pea shoots increased eightfold over the same period.