Flower vendors hardly get any sleep on Ching Ming day

Selling flowers for Ching Ming Festival can be taxing for the roadside vendors, especially on the actual day of the event.

Most of them hardly get any sleep because they would start selling their flowers at the stroke of midnight coming to festival day.

Joicelyn Chiong Sing Yee, for one, said she and her family had been going through this over the last decade.

“We’re not calling it quits. It’s a family business and we do it not just for the money but also for the convenience of those who observe Ching Ming.

“We started selling flowers about two weeks before Ching Ming, from 5am to 6pm (every day).

‘ But today (yesterday), we started our business at 1am and only stopped when all our flowers were sold,” she added.

Chiong, who is studying pharmacy at SEGI University in the peninsula, said she never failed to come back and help her family in the business.

“It gives me that sense of satisfaction every time I have a taker for our flowers. Some are very picky, but when they eventually buy from us, it means that our flowers are OK,” she disclosed.

According to Chiong’s aunt Wong Su Hang, it is quite interesting to sell flowers – this makes all the efforts worthwhile.

The retiree said she took flowerarranging as a hobby.

“Business (for) this Ching Ming isn’t very good,” she lamented.

Meanwhile, a young man who wanted to be known only as Bruce, said sleeping would be a luxury for him during Ching Ming.

“I started selling at midnight (yesterday) and will be here until the flowers are all sold,” he said.

Bruce said he had been helping his mother sell flowers for Ching Ming for three years.

“It’s just for a week or so. Once a year, OK ‘lah’,” he said.

Bruce is working on night shift – meaning he has to prepare for the task as soon as he gets home from work.

“I am helping my mother. We start to sell around 3am,” he said, adding that they also sell broomsticks, candles and drinks.