Vendors and manufacturers across China have been seeing increasing orders for Spring Festival decorations and food in recent months as consumers eagerly prepare for the coming Chinese Lunar New Year.
In north China's Hulun Buir City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, sellers brought goods like grains, chickens, persimmon jellies and frozen pears to village markets.
With this year's Spring Festival falling on Jan 29, the markets are seeing an increasing influx of customers coming to buy special goods for the most important festival in Chinese culture.
"I come to buy goods like candies, Spring Festival decorations with Chinese character Fu, and Spring Festival couplets," said Zhang Na, a customer.
In south China's Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, vendors at Spring Festival goods markets said they have been seeing a noticeable rise in customers since the beginning of January.
In preparation for the anticipated growing demand, many of the sellers said they have been stocking goods since December.
"We have been stocking goods for one or two months. Now they are all neatly placed in the booth for our customers to pick what they like. This year we have a wider variety of goods and they are also sold at low prices," said a vendor surnamed Liang.
"I come to buy some decorations like lanterns for the coming Spring Festival, because every year I want to replace the old Spring Festival decorations with the new ones," said a customer surnamed Lin.
In addition to the typical Chinese Lunar New Year goods, intangible cultural heritages like the Chengnan Dragon Lanterns from east China's Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, are also seeing growing demand.
Currently, two manufacturing plants producing Chengnan Dragon Lanterns in the city have been pumping out over 100 lanterns per day and have received orders for more than 3,500 lanterns in the month before the Spring Festival.
"We received a lot of orders during the end of the year and some of the overseas customers even said that they need our dragon lanterns immediately, so, we have to send the lanterns by air and we are putting in extra hours to produce more," said Shi Kebin, intangible cultural heritage inheritor of Chengnan Dragon Lantern.