Luoyang Peony Cultural Festival
On March 21, 2024, the flower viewing launch ceremony of the 41st China Luoyang Peony Cultural Festival was held in the Sui and Tang Dynasty Relics Botanical Garden. On April 1, the 41st China Luoyang Peony Cultural Festival opened.
China's Luoyang Peony Cultural Festival, formerly known as the Luoyang Peony Fair, began in the Sui Dynasty and has a history of more than 1,600 years. In 1983, the Luoyang Municipal Government took the lead in organizing the official flower viewing festival "Peony Flower Festival". In 2008, it was selected into the national intangible cultural heritage list. In November 2010, with the official approval of the State Council and the Ministry of Culture, it was upgraded to a national-level festival and renamed "China Luoyang Peony Cultural Festival".
Luoyang is the ancient capital of thirteen dynasties and has the reputation of "the thousand-year imperial capital and the city of peonies". Its cultivation began in the Sui Dynasty, reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty, and became the best in the world during the Song Dynasty. Peonies are graceful, fragrant and magnificent, implying auspiciousness, wealth and prosperity, and are a symbol of the prosperity, beauty and happiness of the Chinese nation. Luoyang peonies have huge flowers, many varieties, and unique colors, including 9 major color systems of red, white, pink, yellow, purple, blue, green, black and multiple colors, 10 flower types, and more than 1,400 varieties. During the flower blooming season, Luoyang City is filled with crowds of people, vying to see the beauty of the peonies. The poems of Bai Juyi, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, "It takes twenty days for flowers to bloom and fall, and everyone in the city is crazy about them" and Liu Yuxi's poems, "Only peonies are the true national beauty, and when they bloom, they make a sensation in the capital" are vivid portraits of peony appreciation customs in Luoyang, the eastern capital.
Luoyang peonies are planted all over the city's streets, alleys, parks, factories, mines, government agencies, schools, and hotels. Especially the blooming peonies in the flower belts on both sides of Zhongzhou Avenue make Chinese and foreign guests feel the strong atmosphere of the "Flower City" as soon as they enter Luoyang.
The main tourist attractions include "Wangcheng Park", "National Peony Garden", "China National Garden", "Shenzhou Peony Garden", "Xiyuan Park", "Peony Park", "White Horse Temple", "Bai Juyi's Memorial Park" and so on. There are 800,000 ornamental peonies of all kinds in the city, with 360 varieties in eight colors: red, yellow, green, purple, pink, white, black and blue. On display here are not only ancient varieties from Luoyang, but also newly bred varieties; not only domestic rare varieties from Sichuan, Gansu, Anhui and other places, but also foreign varieties from Japan and other places. In addition, there are some wild varieties originating in my country.
Luoyang’s cultural artworks also complement each other. Production enterprises and folk artists have worked together in the direction of "Specialized, Refinement, Differential, and Innovation". Peony crafts such as peony porcelain, paper-cuts, jade carvings, and embroideries have developed accordingly, enriching the world of peony art from different angles.
(resource: Baidu Encyclopedia)
