Zigui County holds festival to promote local oranges
2023-04-10 16:04:01
By Zeng Lei, Yichang International Communication Studio
Zigui County of Yichang City held an Orange Blossom Festival last Friday to promote its local orange products. The festival attracted thousands of tourists gathering in the county’s Shuitianba to taste fresh oranges, take in the beautiful scenery, and enjoy outdoor activities.
Zigui, the hometown of Qu Yuan, is famous for its navel oranges. The event combined elements of agriculture, culture, tourism and sports allowing attendees to experience the joy of the Zigui Lunwan orange harvest. A provincial paraglide competition was jointly held during the festival.
Customers browsing oranges and related products at the event.
The Lunwan orange, one of the unique local orange varieties in Zigui County, first blossoms in the spring and it is not until the following spring when the fruit ripens. The specific climatic conditions in the Three Gorges reservoir make the area suitable for growing Lunwan oranges.
Local farmer Qu Wanlin took part in the orange auction with 16 Lunwan oranges. Dozens of customers competed for bids on the spot, with Qu eventually selling his oranges for 38,800 yuan (US$5,642), winning the top prize in the 2023 "Orange King Competition.”
Hubei provincial paragliding competition is held jointly during the festival, with more than 50 professional paragliders participating.
Thanks to its navel oranges, Zigui has remained on the list of China's top 100 counties and cities in tourism for five consecutive years.
Now, the Zigui navel orange industry has expanded to cover a planting area of 400,000 mu (26,667 hectare) with 1 million tons of production. The annual output value of the wider orange industry chain has reached nearly 20 billion yuan.
An orange auction is held at the event.
“We feel obliged to promote the Zigui navel orange, and let more people home and abroad know about its brand value,” said Li Lingling, a salesman of Hubei Qugu International Agricultural Group.
Freshippo supermarket, a fresh food supermarket chain with over 330 stores in China, signed a fresh Lunwan orange purchasing cooperation agreement with the Zigui government.
At present, Zigui’s high-quality navel orange industry has standardized and digitalized the whole process of planting, harvesting, quality control, logistics and sales, marking the high-quality development of Zigui navel orange industry on the "fast track.”
