KUNMING, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- Freshly produced cut flowers have added a festival air during the Chinese New Year celebrations and fueled a booming trade.

The Dounan Flower Market, Asia's largest fresh-cut flower trading market, has seen flourishing trade and a surging price index since the beginning of the year, with a superposition of Chinese festival effects from the New Year, Spring Festival to the Lantern Festival.

The Lantern Festival, which falls on the 15th day of the first lunar month, on Wednesday marked the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations.

During the period, the average price of major categories of flowers in the market in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, has reached about 2.5 yuan (about 34 U.S. cents) per stem, an increase of 40 percent compared with the same period last year.

Zhu Qi, planning manager of the Kunming International Flower Auction Trading Center in Dounan, said that entering February, the center's fresh-cut flower price index continued to rise, from 273 points before the Spring Festival to 661 points.

After the eight-day Spring Festival holiday, from Feb. 5 to 13, the center's average daily trading volume amounted to around 4.5 million stems of flowers, and the highest daily trading volume exceeded 6 million stems.

Zhu said the price of single-headed roses rose sharply from 5 yuan to 7 yuan per stem. The highest under-the-hammer price of high-end roses exceeded 13 yuan per stem during the festival. Meanwhile, the price of other festival flowers, including lisianthus, carnations, lilies and tulips, also surged.

In addition to the auction trade, during the Spring Festival, the transaction volume of fresh-cut flowers in Dounan's retail market reached about 190 million stems, with a sales volume registering 288 million yuan. The market is also a popular tourist destination in Kunming, attracting over 40,000 visitors on average daily.

As a barometer of China's flower market, the market has also seen booming sales via various e-commerce platforms. "Yunshe Flowers," a vendor's account on the Chinese short-video sharing platform Douyin, saw its average daily revenue topping 5 million yuan during the Spring Festival. Enditem

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