The Peony Country

The peony is the city flower of Heze, and the Chinese mudan is a woody shrub rather than the soft herbaceous plant of European gardens, growing from a quarter of a metre to three and a half metres high. The earliest documentary mention of mudan is in the Classic of Poetry, written almost three thousand years ago. Gardeners first bred ornamental cultivars in China from plants grown for medicine in the sixth and seventh centuries, and the flowers became fashionable in the Tang, when they were grown in the imperial gardens. A single bloom lasts only seven to ten days, which is why the season is a public event rather than a private pleasure.

In the tenth century the cultivation of peonies spread across China, and Luoyang, the seat of the Song, became the centre for it, a position the city still holds. A second centre developed during the Qing dynasty in Caozhou, now Heze, and both cities still hold annual peony exhibitions and state-funded research facilities. Heze dates its own cultivation to the Sui, says it flourished in the Tang and again in the Ming, and by the Ming and Qing had become the centre of the trade in China. The local saying runs that Caozhou has the best peonies in the world, and Heze has the best peonies in the world.

Heze is the largest base for peony cultivation in the country, and the plants it grows are sold on to markets at home and abroad every year. On 16 March 2012 the China Flower Association, answering the city's application and after expert inspection and review, named Heze the capital of the Chinese peony. The flower has a national history too: in 1994 it was proposed as the national flower after a nationwide poll, but the National People's Congress did not ratify the choice, and a second selection begun in 2003 also ended without a decision. Heze's answer was local: a title, a fair, and fields that flower for a week.