Skip to Content Facebook Feature Image

Preparation for Spring Festival activities, goods in full swing

China

China

China

Preparation for Spring Festival activities, goods in full swing

2026-01-09 05:53 Last Updated At:15:21

Factories in many places across China have already been operating in full capacity as early as one month before the Spring Festival, the country's grandest traditional festival, to respond to people's ardent hope and enthusiasm for the Chinese New Year.

Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, falls on Feb 17 this year.

At a lantern plant in Nanli Village in north China's Shanxi Province, from cutting the wire to welding the frame, from pasting the silk cloth to drawing the patterns, nearly 100 workers are working in close collaboration.

In the structuring workshop, workers are using welding torches to weld ordinary iron wires into shapes such as dragons, phoenixes, and horses amidst flying sparks.

Meanwhile, the craftsmen are mounting carefully selected silk fabric onto the iron skeleton, making sure the form of dragon head, leaping horse, and other figures to be upright and dignified.

At a major cut flower farm in Xixian New Area of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, eight production lines are operating at full capacity to meet the demand for the upcoming grand festival.

Each stalk of flower takes only one hour from picking to finished product, ensuring it is shipped to all parts of the country in a fresher state.

The farm offers a variety of flowers, including anthurium, a star product in recent years for its colorful patterns and auspicious meanings.

This kind of flower originally grew only in tropical rainforests, but advanced technology has enabled various flowers to be cultivated in different seasons and regions.

The 50,000-square-meter greenhouse adopted intelligent IoT environmental control system, which can acquire real-time information on temperature, humidity, light, wind speed, and pests and diseases, and technicians can remotely control the system at the terminal to ensure the plants are in optimal growth condition.

Such precision regulation allows flowers to grow vigorously while also blooming according to order demand, thereby improving the supply efficiency during festive periods.

This year's Chinese New Year flower season started taking orders a month earlier than last year, and the current order volume has exceeded 3 million yuan, an increase of 30 percent compared with the same period last year, and the total order amount is expected to exceed 10 million yuan, according to operators.

The flowers are not only sold to many domestic cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu, but also exported to overseas markets such as Singapore and South Korea.

The thriving business has also boosted local employment. Currently, the dozens of full-time employees at the farm are all from surrounding villages and towns, and the farm also hires hundreds of seasonal temporary workers every year.

Preparation for Spring Festival activities, goods in full swing

Preparation for Spring Festival activities, goods in full swing

China's two major power grid operators -- the State Grid Corporation of China (State Grid) and China Southern Power Grid (CSG) -- reported a surge in investment in the first quarter of 2026, underscoring efforts to strengthen infrastructure construction and support high-quality socioeconomic development in China.

The State Grid said it completed fixed-asset investment worth 129 billion yuan (about 18.77 billion U.S. dollars) in the first three months of this year, up 37 percent the corresponding period of the previous year. The spending has driven more than 250 billion yuan (36 billion U.S. dollars) of investment across the wider industrial chain.

Key projects such as the Panxi ultra-high-voltage (UHV) alternating current (AC) line and the Anhui-Hubei back-to-back direct current (DC) project have seen ground broken for their construction, while several west-to-east power transmission projects have been upgraded.

Investment in connecting renewable energy generation to the grid was reported to have exceeded 10 billion yuan (1.45 billion U.S. dollars) from January to March, a year-on-year rise of more than 50 percent.

The CSG also reported robust growth in investment in the three-month period, with fixed-asset investment reaching 38.45 billion yuan (5.58 billion U.S. dollars), up about 50 percent from a year earlier.

Among its achievements, the company completed and commissioned 80 key projects, including the 220 kV cross-sea power grid interconnection project, which was officially put into operation on March 20. The project ended years of grid isolation on the Weizhou Island in south China by linking it to the main power system of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The construction of 17 other major energy projects, including one linking the power grid of the Xizang Autonomous Region in southwest China with that of Guangdong Province in south China, is advancing rapidly. These projects are expected to bolster regional industries, the maritime economy, digital collaboration and the transition to green energy.

"By accelerating major project construction, investment during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030) is expected to approach 1 trillion yuan (145 billion U.S. dollars), driving a further 2 trillion yuan (290 billion U.S. dollars) of investment across upstream and downstream industries," said Dong Yanle, deputy general manager of the Engineering Construction Department under the China Southern Power Grid.

China ramps up power grid investment in January-March to boost growth

China ramps up power grid investment in January-March to boost growth

Recommended Articles