A maintenance worker prepares fresh leaves for the morning sale. Photo by Gao Erqiang / China Daily

The patrons not only volunteer to arrive first at the lakeside site in the small hours, but have to sit on a bench that acts as the ticket office, and remain there until the close of trading to ensure that business is conducted in an orderly manner.

No one knows the names of the volunteers, and no personal information or contact details about them is exchanged.

A few regulars may recognize the faces of this mysterious "peace-keeping force", as the volunteers are known. The tickets they give out may be easy to copy, but are accepted by every lotus buyer and the maintenance team.

One ticket distributor, who gave his name only as Chen, said of the market arrangements, "It's like a gentlemen's pact."

The 67-year-old said it takes him 30 minutes to travel to the lake by motorcycle, and he only goes there occasionally to stand in for a much older local.

Chen Laidi, leader of the maintenance team, said, "Things got really chaotic when we first started, before someone volunteered to come up with a system to keep order."

The 59-year-old has been working on the lake, which is the size of nearly 1,000 soccer fields, with seven colleagues for nearly 30 years.