My father has a thing for flower markets. Of all the places I took him around the region, I believe the places he was most impressed with were the flower markets we visited. The Hong Kong flower street market in Kowloon had him completely surprised and overwhelmed , but he figured it could be explained by the general wealth one tends to see while walking around in Hong Kong. But this wasn’t just a HK thing, when we visited Beijing we stopped by the Laitai Flower Market (莱太花卉市场, or Ladies’ street), and once again – my father was very impressed with this complex of endless flower and plant shops.
The Beijing Visitor offers a good intro:
Beijing Laitai Flower Trading Center opened up in April 1998. It cost 150 million yuan and its building area amounts to 55000 square meters.
Laitai Flower Trading Center is made up of Laitai flower market and Laitai Flower Street. This is the biggest flower distributing center of northern China.
Laitai Flower Market is composed of the fake flower sale building and the fresh potted flower sale hall. The underground floor of the fake flower building has modern porcelain, lamps, carpets, straw and cane products, eating utensils, stone carvings and some small handicrafts.
So in the complex we go…
Real flowers, fake flowers, for home, for weddings, for cheap, for extremely expensive. It goes on and on, endlessly.
Pop in if you’re in the area. Don’t miss this if you’re a flower addict like my dad.