Tender loving care from a devoted expert takes root over the years

Touring a lotus park with Qian Ping can be compared to following an obstetrician on hospital ward rounds.

As the 60-year-old botanist strolls past each of the 80 or so ponds at the Quyuan Fenghe park in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, she casually points to the budding flowers. She can tell the exact date — sometimes even the time — that they are going to bloom, just like a doctor giving an estimated date of delivery, albeit without an ultrasound scan.

“If you have spent half as much time with lotuses as I have, you will get to know this as well,” quipped Qian, who has devoted more than half of her life to their study and cultivation.

Dubbed the “mother of the West Lake lotus”, Qian and her colleagues have nurtured nearly 100 new types of lotus flowers over the past 30 years by manipulating their DNA.

While only a small fraction of the new varieties make it to the West Lake and the nearby lotus park — Quyuan Fenghe, one of the largest in China — it has never occurred to Qian, who has reached retirement age, to stop breeding new varieties.

She said that according to a Chinese poem, the West Lake can be compared to a beautiful woman who can benefit from both heavy and light makeup, adding that the lotus is representative of summer makeup.

From 20 seeds preserved by her predecessors in the 1950s, she and her team of 12 biologists and botanists have developed hundreds of lotuses, varying in size, color and the number of petals.

They can be as small as a human palm, and grown in pots the size of rice bowls to be appreciated on office desks. They can also resemble peonies with multi-layered petals, or be as yellow as egg yolks through cross-breeding with a North American variety.

Qian was assigned to the Hangzhou landscape engineering and gardening bureau in the early 1980s after she graduated as a botany major.

After the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy, the Zhejiang government decided to rebuild and revive the lotus area by the West Lake. It has been listed as one of the 10 most iconic views at the lake.

In summer, the Quyuan Fenghe lotus park enjoys gentle and cool breezes infused with the crisp fragrance of lotuses.

“I didn’t choose lotuses. Instead, lotuses chose me,” said Qian, who was selected for the team responsible for introducing, cultivating and breeding lotuses for the West Lake.

At a nursery on the outskirts of Hangzhou — built in 1980, and the first in China dedicated to lotuses — more than 1,000 jars contain the plants.

Apart from breeding new varieties, the team is responsible for preserving as many types as possible and extending their blooming season.

Every summer, from May to August, Qian arrives at the nursery before sunrise each day, carefully documenting the growth details of each variety. (Lotuses are believed to be most active and bloom around dawn).

“It’s kind of like breastfeeding. You sacrifice your own daily routine to nurture new life, although I am old enough to be a grandmother,” Qian joked.

She believes that even though scientists can manipulate the genes of plants and animal life, respect for nature should never be abandoned.

“I don’t think we can change the flowers too much, such as the season in which they bloom ... let’s have some patience,” she added.

A maintenance worker prepares fresh leaves for the morning sale.