Sit on the subway to spring, go to a romance of spring flowers, taste the taste of spring, and enjoy a big drama of spring... With the warm spring flowers, my country's spring consumption market continues to heat up, and consumption potential is released at an accelerated pace.

New scenarios, new models and new experiences promote the rapid recovery of offline consumption. In Qingdao, Shandong, you can enjoy flowers all the way by taking the Blue Valley Express or using drone technology and FPV glasses at subway stations along the route; Chengdu, Sichuan will launch three new low-altitude flower viewing routes, flying out of the "flower" experience; Wuxi, Chongqing, Zhuhai and other places have staged a "running fever" to help "tour with the event".

Data from the National Information Center shows that in the first quarter, the offline consumption hot index increased by 14.2% year-on-year, up 9.1 percentage points from the previous quarter; of which March increased by 20.0% year-on-year, 4.7 percentage points higher than the previous two months, and the growth rate continued to rise.

Tourists buy plant plush toys at the National Botanical Garden. Photo by People's Daily reporter Qiao Yeqiong

The warm spring flowers stimulate the enthusiasm for travel, and the holiday market bursts with vitality. "I bought a tulip plant plush toy, made a handmade round fan with dried flowers, and recorded photos of ancient costume hairpins on an AI camera. It was interesting, fun and rewarding!" Recently, Mr. Zhou, who lives in Taiyuan, Shanxi, took his family to Beijing for a trip with his family, starting a poetic and creative outing.

Data from the Ministry of Transport shows that during the Qingming Festival holiday from April 4 to 6, the cross-regional flow of people in the whole society was 798 million, with an average daily number of 266 million, an increase of 7.8% over the Qingming Festival holiday in 2024. According to the data center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, during the 3-day Qingming Festival holiday, 126 million domestic travelers nationwide, an increase of 6.3% year-on-year; the total domestic travel expenses were 57.549 billion yuan, an increase of 6.7% year-on-year.

"Big consumption" such as automobiles and home appliances ushered in a new round of growth boom. The National Information Center monitored the online retail data of major home appliance categories, showing that the online retail sales of related home appliances in the first quarter increased by 9.0% year-on-year, continuing the good momentum of rapid growth in the first two quarters; among which, the year-on-year increase in March was 32.3%, and the demand for home appliance replacement in the spring peak season is accelerating the release of demand for home appliance replacement.

Data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that as of March 24, the total number of automobile trade-in applications nationwide exceeded 1.5 million; consumers purchased more than 28 million units of 12 major home appliance trade-in products.

Taste seasonal food, check in popular movies, etc. are also a must-have option for many people to spend in spring. Foshan, Guangdong combines orange flowers with Cantonese cuisine to create "spring limited food"; Yunnan uses flowers as the protagonist, and food made by flowers such as Panzhihua, camellia, pear blossoms, firecracker flowers take turns to appear; Hubei explores new business forms and new models of cross-border cooperation of "movie + food".

Data from the National Information Center shows that in the first quarter, the popularity index of life service consumption increased by 18.3% year-on-year, an increase of 7.4 percentage points from the previous quarter, of which 14.5% year-on-year in March. By industry, the leisure and entertainment industry and the catering industry increased by 67.6% and 14.5% year-on-year respectively.

Recently, boosting consumption has welcomed favorable policies. The General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the "Special Action Plan to Boost Consumption", deploying 30 key tasks in 8 aspects, including the action to increase income for urban and rural residents, the action to guarantee and support for consumption capacity, and the action to improve quality and benefit the people.

Li Gang, Director of the Consumer Promotion Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said at a press conference on expanding consumption by the Ministry of Commerce recently that my country's consumer market has strong resilience, great potential and sufficient vitality, and the basic trend of recovery and improvement has not changed. With the continued efforts of various consumption expansion policies and measures, the series of activities of "Purchase in China" are carried out in an orderly manner, and the overall consumption market this year will continue to show a stable development trend.