Don’t worry, this will not be an erotic column. The title is part of a well-known Dutch proverb in the world of floristry: Vrouwen bloot, handel dood. It means that, once women start baring themselves – due to the summer heat – trade is dead. Though you don’t see many naked women in China, or actually none at all, trade is still pretty bad. While it may not be ‘dead’, it is definitely far from good.
It is more than summer here and very hot. In all of my 16 years here, I have never experienced such heat, as we’ve been facing a substantial heat wave for a month. Meanwhile, April and May saw no rain either, which is also out of the ordinary.
So we don’t need naked women for the market to be slow here. The result is the same as in Europe, however, where people are lying on the beaches, naked or not: low flower prices. The smaller companies, usually family businesses, just let their flowers wither. They await better times and start pruning everything around eight weeks before prices will improve, in order to ensure a nice cut by that time. Cultivation through cutting is still very common here.
