Deng Jiarong said, "The district and city officials weren't very clear about the whole value trend. They thought that as long as it was developing widely, we should increase our investment. In fact, our initial idea was not entirely consistent with the development of the market economy."
In the summer of 1985, in a single month the "Jilin Daily" published a series of articles under the general heading "Throwing a Wet Blanket over the Kafir Lily".
Subsequently, the People's Daily carried an article, entitled Discussion on the Value and Price of the Kafir Lily. It read in part: "Should the Changchun people spend several hundred yuan on a kafir lily just because they like it? What's the average income of Changchun's residents? And what's the average income of the whole country? Can the kafir lily be considered more important than a bicycle or TV set?
Two months after the regulations on the trade in kafir lilies were issued, the Changchun Municipal Government published a document, called the "Supplementary Regulations regarding the Management of Kafir Lily Trading Markets". It prohibited government departments, enterprises and institutions from buying kafir lilies using public funds. Officials were permitted to grow kafir lilies only for personal use, and not for sale. Workers and Party members were prohibited from trading in kafir lilies. Subsequently, the price of kafir lilies plummeted, the kafir lily markets closed down, and the kafir lily growers found themselves with very serious problems.
Yu Weifan calls it the "black summer". A fifth of Changchun's population were in the kafir lily business. They will never forget what happened to the kafir lily that summer.
The winter came, and temperatures in Changchun fell to minus 40. Like in most houses, there was no heating in Yu Weifan's cellar. The kafir lilies were killed by the cold, and Yu Weifan lost all his savings. Worse still, he was in huge debt.
The newspaper "Kafir Lily" ceased publication. It had been in circulation for just six months, with 26 issues published in total.
Guo Fengyi's Phoenix Coronet Flower Company was asked to leave the department store, after he failed to pay several months' rent.
Shortly afterwards, Zhang Xinxin published a collection of his novels. Included in it was the controversial story, The Kafir Lily Craze.
After an absence of ten years, Guo Fengyi restarted his kafir lily business, and it's still operating today, although the profits are nothing like what they used to be.
On the east side of the First Automobile Works, there is now a stock exchange. Yu Weifan and his wife can often be seen here. They have been shareholders for the past ten years.
(CCTV November 3, 2008)
