A Hong, a woman selling flowers near the Lama Temple, said that winter is the best season for her business. A piece of her flowers, plum blossoms, chrysanthemums or roses, costs 10 yuan.

Every morning, flower peddlers go to the nearby flower wholesale markets to purchase blossoms to sell to passers-by on the streets.

With flower prices at the wholesale market down significantly this year, peddlers and retailers have been able to make money by basically maintaining prices at last year's levels.

"At present retail prices are at least twice that of wholesale prices," said an anonymous source with the managerial office of the Beijing Garden and Flower Market.

The wholesale prices slump as the flower growers in Yunnan and Guangdong, still the major suppliers of ready-cut flowers for Beijing in winter, reaped huge harvests this year.

"Ten-odd flower wholesale markets are too many for the city and we have already been competing with each other in price reduction in order to win consumers, " the source added.

But Yang Zailan, an official with the Municipal Forestry Bureau, said that the vicious competition should be attributed more to the fact that wholesale markets provide similar products.

The city has made the flower industry a major focus of its agriculture restructuring. Every one of Beijing's county and suburban districts has set up its own flower cultivation base.

(China Daily 01/12/01)