The history of The Guangzhou Flower Fair, which usually starts three days before Spring Festival, can be traced back 500 years. If you forgive the Chinglish, China Highlights has a brief description of what the flower fair is:

There is an old saying there, “No flower fairs, no Spring Festival.” During the festival, streets are decorated with fragrant and beautiful fresh flowers, golden tangerines, and elegant miniature landscapes, looking like rivers of flowers in the distance. The streets and fairs in Guangzhou bustle with people shopping and florists from suburban areas setting up temporary shacks for the flower fair.

A Yuexiu District-based microblog posted yesterday a collection of photos of flower markets in Guangzhou ahead of Spring Festival in the 1950s. We may live in an excessive age, but due to its climate, Guangzhou has always been able to hold lavish flower fairs as you can see from these photos taken during the red years.

A flower fair in the centre of the city in 1954

Yonghan Road, now Beijing Road, in 1955

A street with a large number of peach vendors in 1959

A flower stall in 1959