BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhua) -- For generations, market day in rural China was a practical affair. Villagers came with woven baskets and shopping lists, seeking essentials like cooking oil, rice, salt, farm tools and kitchenware, while always keeping an eye for a good bargain.
But on a recent market day in Zhuqiao Township, east China's Shandong Province, the old rhythms of village commerce carried a new tune.
Held six times each lunar month, the Zhuqiao fair has a long history and can draw more than 10,000 visitors a day during festivals. Its nearly 1,000 stalls still sell the staples of rural life -- vegetables, fruit, hoes and frying pans -- but among them are now buckets of fresh flowers, potted plants and other small pleasures that speak to changing tastes in the countryside.
For local resident Xu Zhanli, however, the most attractive corner is no longer the section selling daily necessities, but the flower stalls.
"I used to love growing flowers when I lived in a bungalow," Xu said. "Now I have moved into a brighter, more spacious apartment. Whenever I have time, I come to the fair for a stroll. If I see a nice plant, I buy it and take it home."
"People's lives are getting better," said Xiu Lizhou, a flower vendor at the fair. "I sell more flowers now, and there are more flower stalls at the fair every year."
The Chinese word ganji, or "attending the fair," carries a faintly nostalgic ring. It evokes the days when villagers waited for certain dates on the lunar calendar to stock up on goods that were otherwise hard to find.
Today, with e-commerce, cold-chain logistics, and express delivery reaching deeper into the countryside, many daily necessities that used to require a special trip to the fair can now be purchased at any time. This shift has redefined the role of the rural market.
A villager may still come for a bag of rice or a kitchen knife. But she may also leave with a pot of flowers, a handmade ornament, a new household appliance, a health consultation, or simply the memory of a morning spent watching a folk performance with neighbors.
Across rural China, similar changes are taking shape.
At the rural fair in Shun'an Township, Tongling City of east China's Anhui Province, villager Fang Guoping signed an order in front of a BYD new energy vehicle booth.
"It saved me several thousand yuan, and they even gave me a charging pile," Fang said. He bought the vehicle for trips to town to sell vegetables and to take his children to and from school.
As rural living standards improve and subsidy policies are rolled out, home appliances and automobiles are becoming new highlights of rural consumption. A local car dealer surnamed Zhang in Tongling said compact and practical models were especially popular among farmers, adding that over 200 people visited his booth in a single day during the fair.
The transformation is even more striking in services.
During the recent May Day holiday, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) services were brought to a market in Xingping Township of Yangshuo County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, with free consultations, moxibustion, massage and workshops on making herbal sachets.
"In the past, it was far and inconvenient to go into town to see a doctor," said Liu Lizhen, a local villager who suffers from pain in her shoulders, neck, waist and back. "Now I can consult professional doctors right at the fair near my home."
A doctor from the township central health center gave Liu a massage at the fair to help ease muscle fatigue and explained practical ways to protect her joints, keep warm and stretch at home.
Zhang Guowei, deputy head of the health bureau of Yangshuo, said such experience-oriented fairs are bringing professional health services and TCM culture to people's doorsteps, filling the gap in rural healthcare services and creating new scenarios for tourism and cultural spending.
Underpinning the bustle of the fairs is a broader change in China's countryside.
Official data showed that rural residents' per capita disposable income reached 24,456 yuan (about 3,572 U.S. dollars) in 2025, up 6 percent year on year, while per capita consumption expenditure among rural residents grew by 3.7 percent in real terms in the first quarter of this year, 1.7 percentage points faster than that of urban residents.
China's "No. 1 central document" for 2026, unveiled in February, called for multiple measures to expand rural consumption as part of broader efforts to advance agricultural and rural modernization and promote all-around rural revitalization.
Consultancy firm McKinsey predicted that by 2030, county economies may produce more than 66 percent of China's personal consumption growth.
"New business forms, models and scenarios are reshaping the rural consumption experience," said Tang Xiaofu, an associate professor at College of Agriculture under Guangxi University. "They are also injecting fresh momentum into expanding domestic demand, improving farmers' quality of life and smoothing the economic circulation between urban and rural areas." ■
