Beihai Park prepares for autumn chrysanthemum show

Beihai Park in Beijing is preparing for its annual autumn chrysanthemum exhibition, carrying forward a centuries-old custom of appreciating the flowers in the former imperial garden.

The chrysanthemum is one of Beijing's two official city flowers (the other being the Chinese rose) and has long symbolized resilience and integrity in Chinese culture. It is also one of the "Four Gentlemen" in traditional Chinese art, along with the plum blossom, orchid, and bamboo.

The tradition of appreciating chrysanthemums at Beihai dates back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), when imperial family members and officials gathered to admire the flowers in the royal gardens, according to a news release about the history from the Beijing Forestry and Parks Bureau.

In 1959, renowned chrysanthemum gardener Liu Wenjia entrusted his collection of varieties to Beijing's gardening authorities, which subsequently passed them on to Beihai Park for preservation. Today, the park maintains more than 960 named varieties, with hundreds more yet unnamed cultivars, according to Liu Ning, a fifth-generation inheritor of the park's chrysanthemum cultivation techniques.

"Some of these old varieties are no longer widely appreciated, but we have never given up on them," she said.

The techniques were listed as a district-level intangible cultural heritage in Beijing's Xicheng district in 2014.

Lang Yujie, another inheritor at the park, said preparing exhibition-quality chrysanthemums requires months of meticulous work. Some plants are propagated as early as February, followed by careful management of shoots and buds to ensure their best appearance in autumn.

For Beihai's horticulturists, the annual exhibition is an opportunity to showcase their work and a way to keep traditional chrysanthemum varieties and cultivation techniques alive.

Xu Zhu contributed to this story.