Fresh flowers have been popular commodities for Songming, a county in southwest China's Yunnan province, in its foreign trade with other countries over the past decades. Meanwhile, the county has also witnessed a high volume in the exportation of its preserved fresh flowers, also called "forever flowers", to overseas markets during the same period.
Yanglin, a township in Songming, has a sound natural environment for planting flowers like anna hydrangea, hydrangea macrophylla, babysbreath and pristimera cambodiana.
During the production of "forever flowers", the structure of the flowers can be kept intact after a wide range of complicated procedures, which include dehydration, decoloring, drying and coloring. There are no differences between natural flowers and preserved natural flowers in terms of their colors and shapes.
Yunnan Buluo Flower Trading Company is a business venture that has been involved in the exportation of "forever flowers" over the past several years.
Li Jianhua, founder of Yunnan Buluo Flower Trading Company worked for 17 years before he chose to return to his hometown and set up his own business in 2019.
Li’s company has encouraged more people to take part in the cultivation of natural flowers, open wider markets and raised the price of their products.
For instance, the price of lagurus ovatus has surpassed 60 yuan (about $ 9.37) per kilogram and its total sales volume hit over two million yuan in 2021.
Li's company has created more than 40 employment opportunities, making huge contributions to further increasing family incomes.
Their preserved natural flowers have received great recognition from their business partners for their high quality and strict observation of relevant professional standards.
Li has exported his "forever flowers" to countries such as Russia, the Netherlands, Australia, the US and Canada.
On Feb 8, a group of Li’s employees loaded their preserved natural flowers onto trucks bound for Chongqing, via which their "forever flowers" will be exported to Russia via a China-Europe freight train.