Surrounded by a rainbow of cut flowers, Huang Panpan and her husband began their livestreaming shift as night fell and would not stop until the sun came up. At 8 pm, the 36-year-old began her routine livestream on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. In front of Huang was a table decorated with a stack of fresh blossoms. She picked up a bouquet of pink spray roses for a close-up as online viewers hurried to place their orders.
This workday for the florist-turned-livestreamer and her husband is a daily scene at the bustling Dounan Flower Market in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, and is indicative of China's burgeoning horticultural industry.
The couple started their cut-flower business in 2016 in their hometown, Liaocheng city in Shandong province, providing intracity group-buying to over 10,000 customers via WeChat.
Time-consuming logistics and high costs soon became issues, as the couple were too far away from Yunnan, China's biggest producer of cut flowers. At the end of 2019, they moved to Kunming, where Asia's largest cut-flower trading market, with a yearly trade volume of 11 billion stems, is located.
"Back then, few sellers relied on livestreaming to boost sales," Huang said. "But now, we employ 20 villagers to pack and deliver flowers, and we rent a warehouse about 5,000 square meters in size."
While Huang interacted with her online audience, her husband, Xiang Yancong, was busy purchasing flowers at the Dounan Flower Market. Shining a light on the flower heads, he closely examined their freshness and took note of their prices. "During the day, tens of thousands of visitors from all over the country pour into the Dounan Flower Market, but after 8:30 pm it becomes a wholesale market for florists like me," said the 34-year-old, who was planning to buy 50,000 daisies, carnations and other flowers that day.
The couple have also recruited two professional buyers to bid for roses at the Kunming International Flora Auction Trading Center during the day. As the largest of its kind in Asia, the 900-seat center sold 11.6 million flowers during this year's Spring Festival holiday.
"Each deal at the auction takes just four seconds on average to be completed — an experience that sets your heart racing," Xiang said.
At around 1 am the following day, Huang waved goodbye to her followers, ending her livestream as her husband returned home with a truck full of fresh blossoms. It was now time for them to survey their purchases and pack the flowers for later delivery.
To keep the delicate blossoms intact and as fresh as possible, they wrapped the cut ends with moist sponges and secured the stems with cable ties before fixing the flowers in cardboard boxes. "It is a race against the clock. Thanks to cold-chain aviation and high-speed railway logistics, fresh flowers can be delivered to customers within three days," Huang said.
The couple is among the country's most sensitive to the boom in the flower industry. Over the past decade, the per capita disposable income of China's growing middle class has doubled. Many buyers no longer regard flowers as a luxury for special occasions, but rather as daily purchases to enrich life.
From a street of roadside stalls selling flowers about 30 years ago, the Dounan Flower Market has become Asia's largest cut flower trading market, selling to more than 40 countries and regions, including Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, with 21,700 hectares of cut flowers grown in Yunnan in 2021. "I used to only buy flowers when it was someone's birthday or for an anniversary, but now, flowers are an everyday decoration and I buy them every week via livestreaming," a woman surnamed Wang, from Yuncheng city in Shanxi province, commented during Huang's livestream.
With a following of 1.7 million, the florist couple receives an average of 3,000 orders worth 100,000 yuan ($14,000) every day. As the sun rose at 6 am, they concluded a busy day of work, and the flowers they had just packed awaited early flights to take them to buyers across China.
