In Yunnan, edible flowers adorn the dinner table

For Masixonxay Kanchanet, roses have always belonged in bouquets, not on the dinner table.

Growing up in Laos, she saw roses as gifts for Valentine's Day, wedding decorations and symbols of affection. So when the 27-year-old master's degree student walked through Daguan Zhuanxin farmers' market in Kunming, Yunnan province, and found edible flowers being sold alongside vegetables, her first thought was not to eat them.

"I thought of flower arrangements," she said.

Kanchanet was even more surprised after tasting a freshly baked rose-filled pastry, or xianhuabing, a local specialty filled with preserved rose petals.

"I could actually taste the petals," she said. "It was rich and fragrant, almost like smelling fresh flowers."

For many people in Yunnan, however, putting flowers on the table is nothing unusual.

A little after 8 am, the market was already stirring, with vendors arranging their produce as shoppers streamed in. Beneath the blue tie-dyed fabric stretched across the market ceiling, stalls offered everything from local ingredients to freshly brewed coffee. Flowers are part of that abundance.

Meng Decang, 57, has run a vegetable stall at the market for more than 20 years. In March and April, when edible flowers are at their most plentiful, his stall alone may carry more than 10 varieties.

Older shoppers generally know best how to prepare them, Meng said. Foreign visitors sometimes stop and ask about the flowers, but "they don't really know how to make them taste good", he added.

For Kunming native Chen Yafu, 53, such knowledge was never something that had to be formally taught.

"When you see everyone buying these flowers at the market and then watch your mother cook them at home, you naturally learn," he said.

"In spring, there are jinquehua (Chinese peashrub flowers) and wild pear blossoms, in summer jasmine, and in autumn chrysanthemums," he said. "When you see these flowers, you know which season has arrived."

The habit is rooted in Yunnan's extraordinary natural and cultural diversity, said Yang Chunhe, director of the Department of Tourism Management at Yunnan Agricultural University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

For generations, communities across the province have learned which local plants can be eaten and how to prepare them.

Eating flowers reflects "a simple way of understanding the land and making use of its local resources", Yang said.

Much of that knowledge — which flowers are edible and how they should be prepared — has traditionally been passed down by word of mouth, making its documentation and preservation increasingly important.

Nearly 150 types of flowers are used in Yunnan cuisine, according to Yang. During the peak season in March and April, as many as 40 types of edible flowers may be on sale at Daguan Zhuanxin farmers' market in a single day. However, among Yunnan's many edible flowers, one has traveled much farther than most: the rose.

Rose-filled pastries in Kunming can be traced to around 1856, according to Cai Jinlin, president of the Kunming Bakery Industry Association. Before 2000, however, they were largely a seasonal treat, available for only about half a month, from mid-April to early May.

As freezing and storage technology improved around the turn of the century, rose petals could be preserved much longer, helping to transform the pastry from a seasonal Kunming snack into a year-round Yunnan specialty.

At Fang Guohua's pastry stall inside the market, the first batch comes out shortly after 8 am. On busy days, the 52-year-old can sell 2,000 to 3,000 pastries.

Many of the rose petals used in pastries sold this month were harvested during the first bloom in March, then preserved and refrigerated, he said.

For visitors, flower pastries offer an easy way to take a taste of Yunnan home. For Zeng Hanqiong, another Kunming resident in her 50s, they also carry memories across generations.

Zeng said she remembers that her parents took her to buy pastries from a long-established Kunming bakery when she was a child. Decades later, she still buys them, but now they are for the elderly and children in her own family.

For Kanchanet, the Lao student, one taste has only sparked more curiosity.

She now wants to return in March or April, when the market's edible flowers are at their most abundant — and find out what they taste like beyond the pastries.