The annual international peony festival in Heze, east China's Shandong Province, opened Sunday and will run through May 8.

Shi Dongxing, deputy director of the Tourism Bureau of Heze, said that the best time to view the beauty of blossoming peonies will not be until this weekend due to the recent cool weather. Heze is the world's largest peony growing region with about 5,333 hectares cultivated with the flower.

Peony is one of the favorite flowering plants of Chinese, valued for the bloom's large size, striking color and the feeling of "magnificence," "stateliness" and "prosperity" it inspires.

"It's an amazing experience to see large stretches of peonies sometimes 133.3 hectares in one single patch, blossom around the same time," said Chen Xinzhen, a Heze citizen.

Heze grows more than 1,000 species of peonies in nine color groups, including red, white and green. The green type is considered the premium type.

The flowering period of peony used to be only one week. But technology has extended the period to around a month.

Heze began growing peonies around the mid 1500s. The festival, begun in 1992, annually hosts more than 1 million visitors and brings in on average 120 million yuan (around US$14.46 million).

The other major peony festival in China has opened in Luoyang, central China's Henan Province, on April 8.

(Xinhua News Agency April 12, 2005)