Village markets journey from trade to experience

For generations, market day in rural China was largely about necessity. Villagers arrived with woven baskets and shopping lists, searching for essentials like cooking oil, rice, salt, farm tools and kitchenware, while always hoping to secure a good bargain.

But at a recent fair in Zhuqiao township, East China's Shandong province, the familiar rhythms of village commerce carried a new tune.

Held six times a month according to the traditional Chinese calendar, the Zhuqiao fair has a long history and can draw more than 10,000 visitors a day during festivals. Its nearly 1,000 stalls still sell the staples of rural life — vegetables, fruit, hoes and frying pans — but among them are now buckets of fresh flowers, potted plants and other small pleasures that reflect changing tastes in the countryside.

For local resident Xu Zhanli, the flower stalls have become the fair's biggest attraction.

"I used to love growing flowers when I lived in a bungalow," Xu says. "Now I have moved into a brighter, more spacious apartment. Whenever I have time, I come to the fair for a stroll. If I see a nice plant, I buy it and take it home."

"People's lives are getting better," says Xiu Lizhou, a flower vendor at the fair. "I sell more flowers now, and the number of flower stalls grows every year."

The Chinese word ganji, or "attending the fair", carries a faintly nostalgic ring. It evokes the days when villagers waited for certain dates on the Chinese calendar to stock up on goods that were otherwise hard to find.

Today, however, e-commerce platforms, cold-chain logistics and express delivery networks have reached deep into the countryside, making many everyday products available year-round. As a result, the role of rural fairs is changing.

A villager may still come for a bag of rice or a kitchen knife, but she may also leave with a pot of flowers, a handmade ornament, a new appliance, a health consultation, or simply the memory of a morning spent watching a folk performance with neighbors.

Similar changes are unfolding across rural China.

At the rural fair in Shun'an township, Tongling city of East China's Anhui province, villager Fang Guoping placed an order for a BYD new energy vehicle.

"It saved me several thousand yuan, and they even gave me a charging pile," Fang says. He plans to use the vehicle for trips to town to sell vegetables and to take his children to school.

As rural incomes rise and subsidy policies expand, home appliances and automobiles are becoming new drivers of countryside consumption. A local car dealer surnamed Zhang says compact and practical vehicles are especially popular among farmers, adding that more than 200 people visited his booth in a single day during the fair.

The transformation is perhaps most visible in the growing range of services.

During the recent May Day holiday, traditional Chinese medicine services were brought to a market in Xingping township of Yangshuo county, South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. Villagers could receive free consultations, moxibustion treatments, massages and even join workshops on making herbal sachets.

"In the past, going into town to see a doctor was inconvenient," says local villager Liu Lizhen, who suffers from pain in her shoulders, neck, waist and back. "Now professional doctors are available right at the fair near my home."

At the market, a doctor from the township health center gave Liu a massage to relieve muscle fatigue and explained simple ways to protect her joints, stay warm and stretch at home.

Zhang Guowei, deputy head of the health bureau of Yangshuo, says such experience-oriented fairs are bringing professional health services and TCM culture to people's doorsteps, filling the gap in rural healthcare services and creating new scenarios for tourism and cultural spending.

Behind the bustle of the fairs lies a broader transformation taking place across China's countryside.

Official data showed that rural residents' per capita disposable income reached 24,456 yuan ($3,572) in 2025, up 6 percent year-on-year, while per capita consumption expenditure among rural residents grew by 3.7 percent in real terms in the first quarter of this year, 1.7 percentage points faster than that of urban residents.

China's "No 1 central document" for 2026, released in February, called for stronger measures to expand rural consumption as part of wider efforts to modernize agriculture and energize rural areas.

Consultancy firm McKinsey predicts that by 2030, county-level economies could account for more than 66 percent of China's personal consumption growth.

"New business models and consumption scenarios are reshaping the rural consumer experience," says Tang Xiaofu, an associate professor at the College of Agriculture under Guangxi University. "They are also injecting fresh momentum into expanding domestic demand, improving farmers' quality of life and smoothing economic links between urban and rural areas."