Carnations by the kilo

Piles of carnations are trimmed and bundled, ready for buyers at Dounan, one of China's largest wholesale flower markets. Photo by Tian Hong / For China Daily

Top: Cacti and other colorful succulents strike an exotic note at the markets. Bottom: Yunnan's cut-flower industry is growing at an astonishing rate. Provided to China Daily

In Yunnan, flowers are sold by weight, like vegetables. Pauline D Loh visits Dounan near Kunming, where half of China's cut flowers start their journey at the break of dawn.

Going back home to Yunnan always brightens my day, literally. In our garden in Kunming, the sun seems to shine brighter, the air is crisp and clear, the birds sing louder, the flowers smell better and even the sky looks a lot more blue. Or perhaps it's just such a contrast with the hazy days of Beijing. Yunnan is China's natural garden -full of greenery, color and the most amazing flora and fungi. Almost three-quarters of all known edible mushrooms are found in Yunnan, and it is a treasure trove of many of the precious roots and herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine. But did you know that almost half of China's major exports in cut and fresh flowers come from Yunnan?

If you were shopping for flowers in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong or even Singapore, it is very likely the roses and carnations you are cradling so lovingly were grown in Yunnan. To be precise, they would have been nurtured in and around Kunming, which has the largest cut-flower industry in the country.

Yunnan's cut flower exports are now worth more than $500 million every year and the province also accounts for more than 50 percent of the domestic market.

It all begins in a little wholesale market town called Dounan, where the action starts three hours after midnight and by the time dawn breaks and the sun hovers over the horizon, all major transactions are done and the buyers and sellers would have packed up and gone home.

I had always wanted to visit Dounan to witness this wonderful flower market that sounded so much like the Covent Garden of My Fair Lady. So, this time, I forced my husband awake at an unearthly hour and together we made a pre-dawn foray into Dounan.

The drive from our Western Hills estate to Chenggong in the southeast of Kunming took about an hour in pitch darkness, lit only by the waning moon and a scattering of stars. But as we approached, huge greenhouses by the side of the road advertised the end of our journey.

Soon, we saw the silhouettes of donkey- and horse-carts laden with bunches of flowers and we knew we were getting closer.

The Dounan flower market itself is just a huge, huge shed. Wholesalers display their flowers by categories, automatically grouping themselves into a colorful patchwork for the convenience of the browsers and buyers.

As we entered, huge bunches of birds of paradise were laid out neatly on the floor and propped up against each other in a burning display of gold, orange and iridescent blue.

Along the next aisle, sheaves of eucalyptus leaves and piles of statice or everlasting forget-me-nots in every shade of purple competed for attention.

But it was the carnations and roses that lit up the dark and dreary shed where buyers brought along torchlights which they shone into the heart of the flower sheaves to check on quality and quantity.

Huge bunches of carnations flared with color - deep red, bright orange, soft shades of pink, sunny yellows, buttery cream-colored buds - all stacked as high as a man.

The roses were a more muted display, with the blooms carefully protected between layers of corrugated cardboard. But the colors still glowed between the white layers in shades that ran the whole spectrum of the rainbow, including some that were whimsically named Smurf blue and passionate purple.

There is a particular variety called the Yunnan Rainbow, a tightly packed blossom that starts off with a cream base, darkens to a gold and ends with a bright fringe of fuchsia pink. It is a lovely flower, and the wholesaler told me it is a best-seller for bridal bouquets.

Funnily enough, there was very little fragrance in the air, and I suspect that flowers bred for cutting spend all their energy on their electrifying brilliance of color, and it was the paler blooms like the tiny osmanthus or the nondescript ylang-ylang that could devote effort to producing such glorious perfume.

Once we got past our awe at the sea of color, we decided to buy some bunches to take back to Beijing. It would be several more months before we came home again, and I wanted a little souvenir to brighten up that prospect.

The roses were tempting but no longer as cheap as I remembered. Still, at 15 yuan per bunch, it worked out to less than 50 fen per stalk and I happily chose a few bunches. These were long-stemmed champagne roses that could easily have fetched several hundreds in the larger cities.

Huge piles of carnations in another riot of color drew me away from the roses. There were solid blooms in the deepest pinks, yellow, peach, red and white. But there were also ice-cream colored buds streaked with raspberry red and purple.

We picked up a bunch that weighed 4 kilos. It cost us 40 yuan, or about 10 yuan per kilo, and as my husband hoisted the bunch on his shoulders, I realized that it was all true.

Yunnan flower farmers really do sell their carnations by the kilo.

The morning was not over. After we carefully placed our floral purchases in the car, we decided to join the locals at breakfast, There were the usual dough fritters and soy beancurd, and meat pies, and chickpea fritters fried to a crisp.

We sat down on little stools by the roadside, and for the price of just eight stalks of roses, shared a huge bowl of wanton dressed with freshly chopped coriander and tiny shrimps to sweeten the stock.

These are memories that will sustain me until I return home again to my beloved Yunnan, and I will dream of paradise right where my garden is, and a home decorated with kilos of carnations.