Flourishing flower markets in Guangdong highlight local culture in Spring Festival holiday

People in south China's Guangdong Province would hold on their must-do traditions before the annual Spring Festival in the start of the Chinese New Year, including visit to local "flower streets" to buy colorful fresh flowers and other holiday goods, and watch folk performances.

Across the province, traditional flower markets on "flower streets" usually start from three days before the New Year's Eve and last until the early hours of the New Year, prompting local residents to "walk the flower streets" in the final days before the Spring Festival, a tradition that was inscribed on China's National List of Representative Projects of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in 2021.

The fixed year-end event, blending flower trade with Chinese New Year blessings, embodies the locals' wishes for good fortune and beautiful prospects of the coming year.

In Guangzhou, capital city of the province, the Xihu Flower Market located in the Yuexiu District is the city's iconic century-old flower market.

Each flower carries a special blessing. Visitors can pick their favorite blooms based on the luck they wish for, making it a joyful and meaningful way to welcome the Chinese New Year. "I came to the Yuexiu flower market to buy peach blossoms, and I have bought some. Then I will take a look at the daffodils," said a visitor.

The flower markets this year boast many key highlights: ICH experiencing, Cantonese landscape appreciation, launch of events to support farmers and enterprises, and tech-folk fusion programs.

"We can see robot dance and lion dance here. So there will be many traditional cultural activities and some innovative elements in a flower market. It is not only a reflection of Lingnan culture, but also a concentrated manifestation of excellent traditional Chinese culture," said Wang Daxin, head of the Yuexiu District Cultural Development Promotion Association.

Flourishing flower markets in Guangdong highlight local culture in Spring Festival holiday

The Lianghekou hybrid pumped storage hydropower station marked two milestones on Sunday, completing excavation of its underground powerhouse and beginning concrete pouring for its downstream reservoir, bringing the mega clean‑energy project in Sichuan Province closer to completion.

Located on the Western Sichuan Plateau at an altitude of 3,000 meters, the facility uses the Lianghekou Reservoir, the province's largest, as its upper reservoir and the Yagen Level‑1 Hydropower Station reservoir as its lower reservoir. It is equipped with four reversible units of 300,000 kilowatts each, operating jointly with the 3 million kilowatts conventional units of the Lianghekou project to reach a total installed capacity of 4.2 million kilowatts.

Once completed, the plant will combine natural runoff power generation with bidirectional regulation through pumped storage.

The underground powerhouse, described as the project's "power heart," is buried about 500 meters beneath the mountain. Stretching nearly 200 meters in length and 60 meters in height, it reaches a maximum depth of 650 meters, serving as the core hub of the development.

This high-altitude green-energy "super power bank" is rapidly taking shape and is expected to play a vital role in strengthening clean-energy supply security and enhancing grid regulation capabilities in China.

World's largest hybrid pumped-storage power project under construction in Sichuan