View of Jiangling Village, one of the tourist destinations in Wuyuan, East China, Jiangxi Province Photos: VCG
With the arrival of spring, streams of visitors and tourists are seen in city parks, scenic spots and rural villages enjoying their weekends. Not only did many famous scenic spots introduce their own special routes, but residents from all over the country also spontaneously planned their own colorful tourism routes and posted them on social media.
Often called the most beautiful season of the year, spring turns every field and meadow into a sea of beautiful flowers, including Beijing.
As the temperatures rise, some of the flowers in Yuyuantan Park, National Botanical Garden, Jingshan Park, Beihai Park and Sanlihe Park have blossomed in the Chinese capital. Going to different parks to enjoy the flowers has become a popular outdoor activity for many people.
Feel the moment
Related hashtags for the flowering season topped China’s popular platform Little Red Book with more than 1.2 billion views.
Netizens shared their own routes for viewing spring flowers in Beijing and received tens of thousands of likes for it.
Beihai Park, Olympic Forest Park, National Botanical Garden, Summer Palace, Beijing Garden Expo Peach Valley, Temple of Heaven are among the favorites.
“We heard from our friends in Beijing that the peach blossoms in Yuyuantan Park are the most beautiful. We can’t believe it’s so amazing and beautiful here and it’s better to come here on a weekday because there are less people,” Nikki and Abby, two international students in Beijing, told the Global Times on Thursday.
While enjoying the beautiful flowers, the city’s major parks and scenic areas have also launched a series of traditional cultural activities.
The Temple of Heaven will hold 12 spring events from March to April.
In mid-April, Jingshan Park will host the Jingshan Peony Culture and Art Festival, which will tell the history and culture of the park, demonstrating the deep cultural connotation through exhibitions, interactive activities and commercial events.
In addition, the Plum Blossom Cultural Festival will be held in Beijing Ming City Wall Ruins Park, Yuetan Park and Wanshou Park.
Tourists visit cherry blossoms in Yaojia Village in Sanming, east China’s Fujian Province on February 24, 2023. Photos: VCG
More than flowers
As March usually marks China’s booming flowering season, the influx of tourist crowds is also an opportunity for rural villagers to strengthen their businesses as well.
In Wuyuan, East China’s Jiangxi Province, the terraced canola fields of Huangling District are now in their peak flowering period, with the picturesque scenery attracting tourists from all over the country.
A couple from Anyang, central China’s Henan province, told the Global Times on Thursday that they plan to make a 10-hour journey of more than 1,000 kilometers next week to reach Wuyuan just for the rapeseed flowers.
“We were supposed to plan our trip during the upcoming Qingming Festival, but we were worried that it might be crowded at that time, so we changed the date of our trip,” Anyang tourist Liang Yiqing told the Global Times.
This place is famous for its rich variety of flowers, said a Wuyuan local named Zou Chenzhi.
From February, people can appreciate the plum blossoms in full bloom, followed by canola blossoms, peach blossoms and pear blossoms in March and cherry and azalea blossoms in April and May.
Data from Mafengwo, a major Chinese travel and ticketing platform, recently showed that the number of customer searches for “boom travel” and related terms doubled compared to last week.
Travel routes in eastern and southwestern China are particularly popular with tourists, notes another Chinese travel and ticketing platform Tuniu.
In Yinghualing Village, Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, the village has created its own cherry blossom festival to boost its tourism business.
“Our village started the cherry blossom festival back in 2019, and since then we have witnessed thousands of tourists heading to the village on weekends and holidays during the blossoming season every year,” noted villager Zheng Daolin.
The cherry blossom fields are a business in the village that attracts tens of thousands of tourists and brings economic benefits to the villagers worth millions of yuan every year.
And the trick, as local villagers told China News Service in a recent interview, is that they are now working on a new business model to combine tourism with local cultural specialties.
“Tourists like our pickles, ground tofu, cold noodles and other snacks. I usually earn hundreds of yuan in one day during the holidays with my food stall,” Zheng said.