46 BEIJING REVIEW AUGUST 1, 2019 http://www.bjreview.comFORUM
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[email protected]Please provide your name
and address along with
your commentsHow Should China’s National Flower
Be Selected?
T
he China Flower Association (CFA)
recently launched an online vote to
select China’s national flower. On
the website, the question is: Do you agree
the peony should be designated as the na-
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or she will have nine other candidates to
choose from, including the plum blossom,
the chrysanthemum and the Chinese rose.
The CFA said on July 23 that 80 percent
of the 362,264 participants voted for the
peony, followed by the plum blossom and
the orchid. It also made it clear that the
vote is only an opinion poll and will not de-
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on the result will later be submitted to
related government agencies, according to
the association.
However, the move has prompted a heated
debate online, with some questioning whetherWKH&)$LVTXDOLĶHGWRRUJDQL]HWKHSROODQG
others differing over which flower should
be chosen.Questionable vote
Cao Fei (Shanghai Observer): It is neither
fair nor reasonable to ask for a majority
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a little known website over a few days.
Currently, China has no official flower
and the debate surrounding its selection
has been ongoing. There were two votes
in the 1980s, with the plum blossom win-
ning one and the peony winning the other.
Some have even raised the proposal of
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netizens suggested “one country, multiple
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reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity of
Chinese people.
As a matter of fact, the CFA organized
a national flower vote in 1994 and decided
to recommend the peony, the winner of
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when the proposal was raised with the
Standing Committee of the National People’s
Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature,
it met with strong objection from lawmak-
ers who supported the plum blossom. In the
end, the NPC had to shelve the decision to
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It’s not to say that the association cannot
organize a new round of voting again. But
the vote must have a wide representation
of public opinion and have no preset results.
Otherwise, it will only result in disagreement
in society, while the more important issues
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er should be designated and what the point
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It also needs to be noted that a consen-
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on its main production bases. Peony cul-
tivation has a history of more than 4,000
years in China. Luoyang in central China’sHenan Province and Heze in the eastern
province of Shandong are the major pro-
duction areas for peonies in China. The two
cities have vehemently supported the idea
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both in 1994 and in the current vote.
Another question arises: If the peony
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will the two cities be embroiled in a fresh
debate about the place of origin of the
flower and which city has better peony
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would have totally missed the point.
Zhang Feng (Qianjiang Evening
News): The peony probably won the vote
before it ended. The website for voting is
rarely visited and it’s hard to solicit the ma-
jority opinion of Chinese society in just a
few days. More importantly, media outlets
in Luoyang and Heze mobilized local citi-
zens to cast ballots for the peony.
The two cities’ enthusiasm for the vote
is evidently high. Although they have long
had disputes about whose peony species
are better, they were united in this vote.
Luoyang’s peony has been very fa-
mous since ancient times. During the
Tang Dynasty (618-907), the flower was
common in the city and there were many
poems singing its praise. On the other
hand, Heze has made great efforts to de-
velop peony cultivation in the past two
decades, with its cultivated area surpassing
that of Luoyang. The two cities have both
upheld the peony as the drawcard for local
tourism. Therefore, there are clear eco-
nomic considerations behind their push to
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However, many people in other parts
of the country reject the idea of the peony
becoming the national flower. Some
netizens in south China say they have
never even seen a peony and they prefer
the plum blossom or the lotus flower. In
China’s cultural traditions, although the
peony was widely popular during the Tang
Dynasty, the plum blossom and the lotus
have been more frequently seen in paint-
ings drawn by scholar-painters since the