Chinese New Year in Beijing

Chinese New Year: the gift that is still alive in March

Cut stems are built for one evening and the week that follows it. A large share of what people send for Chinese New Year is chosen on the opposite principle, which is why potted and flowering plants take up so much of the order book around that date. A kumquat tree, an orchid in a glazed pot, a branch in bud that opens over the following fortnight: each of them reads as a gift about a beginning rather than about a dinner. They also stay in the room long after the table has been cleared.

The branch is the version that changes daily.

What each plant asks of its owner

An orchid in a pot flowers for months and needs no vase, no daily trim and no attention from the person who receives it, which is why it survives an office as easily as a home. A kumquat wants light and even watering and will drop fruit in a dark corridor. Cut branches in bud open on the room's schedule, quickly beside a radiator and slowly by a cool window, so the same purchase can be pushed forward or held back by where it is put. None of this is difficult, though it is worth saying out loud when the plant goes to somebody who has never kept one. A bunch of stems on a reception desk, by contrast, is in the bin by the end of the week.

Pot colour is part of the gift and is usually decided too late. Red glaze against a red interior turns into one flat patch, while plain ceramic lets the plant do the work.

Red is not one colour

Scarlet is loud and photographs well. Deep wine is quieter and sits better with wood and dark furniture. The difference shows up in the ribbon and the paper before it shows up in the flowers, so the shade is worth fixing before assembly rather than after. Gold belongs in the details, a thin edge on the paper or a rim on a pot, rather than sprayed across the buds.

Glitter on petals and lacquer finishes cheapen the work at any budget.

White as a base carries a meaning the sender rarely intends. In this tradition it belongs to mourning, and an arrangement led by white chrysanthemums will be read that way whatever the card says. Between reds, as a break, it does no harm at all.

Cut flowers that hold the palette

Red roses give a dense even tone and do not fall apart in a heated flat. Carnations build volume from a small number of stems and outlast most of their neighbours in the vase. Chrysanthemum fills a large shape and takes the swing between cold street, lift and warm room without wilting. Amaryllis and anthurium do the opposite job, one strong accent instead of a mass of buds. For a table all of it should stay low, roughly the height of a hand, so that nobody is talking through a vase.

A flat with children in it narrows the list slightly. Tight heads with no shedding pollen and no sharp scent come through a crowded evening better than anything delicate.

Ordering around a moving date

The date follows the lunar calendar and lands somewhere in the second half of winter, so the useful anchor is this year's date rather than a number in the diary. Demand squeezes into a short window around it, and red roses are the first thing to go. A shade agreed in advance is what protects you from a silent substitution.

For a florist in Beijing these days mean the same palette over and over, so anything unusual, a flowering branch or a large amaryllis, is reserved a week or two ahead. Work assembled at the last minute shows it in small things: a ribbon cut crooked, paper with fold marks, heads at different heights in the same row.