The press conference for the 2020 Gaozhou Lychee Cultural Festival is held in Gaozhou, a county-level city in Maoming, on April 15. [Photo/mm111.net]

The 2020 Gaozhou Lychee Cultural Festival kicked off in Gaozhou, a county-level city in Maoming, on April 15, aiming to promote the sales of lychees and the development of Gaozhou's cultural and tourism industries, as well as boost the county's economic transformation and upgrading.

A series of activities, including the opening ceremony, online live streaming sales fairs, and a shopping festival, have been scheduled for the lychee cultural festival.

At the opening ceremony, the festival organizer contacted the secretary general of the Red Cross Society of Jingzhou, Hubei province, who gave an overview of the current status of the city's efforts to resume work and production.

The festival organizers also announced that they would present the freshest Gaozhou lychees to heroes who put themselves in harm's way during the fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic in Hubei.

Gaozhou has a lychee plantation history of more than 2,000 years. By the end of 2019, the cultivation area of lychees in Gaozhou reached 550,000 mu (36,667 hectares) and accounted for about half of that in Maoming, which is the world's largest continuous production base for lychees.

Gaozhou lychees have a wide range of more than 30 varieties. It also boasts high yields, which reached 160,000 metric tons in 2019, accounting for half of that in Maoming and a quarter of that in Guangdong province.

The lychee industry in Gaozhou has developed a relatively complete industrial chain, ranging from plantation, processing, warehousing, logistics, and sales to product development, branding, and tourism. The county is on the way to building the nation's strongest lychee industrial cluster and a world-class lychee characteristic town.