Vinh City these days is filled with the colors of spring when flowers are blooming everywhere. On the streets, trucks are loaded with flowers to the selling points. Apricot, kumquat, grapefruit, chrysanthemum, orchid, camellia, rose... are blooming brilliantly. The atmosphere is also more bustling when many people come to see, admire and buy flowers. People who come here to sell flowers and ornamental plants are from all over the country. They are people who grow apricot in faraway Binh Dinh, kumquat in Quang Nam or peach trees from Hanoi. They are farmers in rural areas who grow flowers to sell on the streets, or people who take advantage of the days before Tet to do business, to earn extra money to spend during Tet.
But unfortunately, selling “flowers” is so risky that many people compare it to a “gamble”. Renting premises at high prices, eating for free, lying in temporary tents. On sunny days, they worry about the flowers blooming, wilting, and dying quickly. If it is very cold, they worry about the flowers rotting. During the day, they take care of, look after, and introduce the flowers to customers; meals are cold lunch boxes or hastily cooked instant noodles, or hastily made bread. Every night, they lie huddled in tents with the wind blowing all around. After going through hardships and difficulties, they only hope to sell out their goods soon, earn a profit, go home to celebrate Tet, enjoy Tet, and reunite with their families. However, that wish is not easy to come true…
During Tet, everyone goes shopping. Some people shop early, after the full moon of the twelfth lunar month, buying kumquat and apricot blossoms to display, while others wait until after the Kitchen Gods' Day to buy. Buying early is partly to decorate the house to create a Tet atmosphere, and partly as a way to help flower sellers sell out quickly and return to their hometowns to celebrate Tet in the spirit of "everyone is happy". But there are also many people who wait until the 29th or 30th of Tet, or even before New Year's Eve, to buy with the mentality that when the market closes, sellers will have to sell off at cheap prices, as if giving them away...
I still remember, in Tet 2017, at a flower market in the South, starting from the full moon of December, it was bustling with people preparing goods, but there were only people looking, watching, asking for prices, almost no one buying. It was not until noon on the 30th of Tet that people poured out in large numbers and forced the sellers to lower their prices. Many people had to "swallow the bitter pill" and accept selling at a cheap price, to salvage whatever money they could so they could return home in time for Tet. But there were also people who were determined to bring their goods back, some others were so angry that they smashed the flower pots, destroying the flowers into trash instead of dumping them.
And in the past Tet holidays, many times, flower sellers had to accept unsold products, accept losses, accept empty-handedness, but never let buyers force them to lower their prices. And as Tet approaches, messages appear on social networks calling for "Don't wait until the 30th to buy flowers for Tet". A Facebooker shared: "Don't buy flowers and ornamental plants on the 30th of Tet if you can buy them before. Don't wait until noon on the 30th, don't wait until the afternoon of the 30th, the evening of the 30th, or even after New Year's Eve... to buy them at a cheaper price. Flower growers work hard all year round, take meticulous care, and go through many steps. At the end of the year, they bring blankets to the selling place to sleep for a whole week, stand in the middle of the street to sell even in rainy and cold weather, and sleep huddled under a tarp at night, while you sleep with a warm blanket. So don't be afraid to give each other joy and smiles at the end of the year."
Tet is coming, so that everyone can be happy, sellers should not charge sky-high prices, and those who are interested should go buy early. So that everyone can be "happy like Tet", not "flowers smile, people cry".
Article: Tue Anh
Illustration: Document
