【Epoch Times, June 14, 2025】
A team from the Chinese Communist Party’s media went to the lychee producing area in Guangdong for an interview, promoting the abundant harvest of lychees with the slogan “Four Seasons of Money”. However, online videos show that local fruit farmers are in distress, as the purchase price of lychees has dropped to 1 yuan per 500g with no takers. The lychees couldn’t be sold and farmers ended up feeding them to pigs or throwing them away. Surprisingly, the lychees sold in the market are priced as high as over ten yuan per 500g.
The People’s Daily, a CCP media outlet, published a report on June 14 about a research team’s investigation in Guangdong, claiming that in the largest lychee producing area in China – “Four Seasons of Money” in Maoming, Guangdong, local fruit farmers proudly stated, “Very busy, very tired, but very sweet!” It is estimated that a village in the area will produce about 13,000 tons of lychees, with an expected output value of 150 million yuan.
However, the CCP media completely omitted the collapsing situation of lychee purchase prices.
On the morning of June 13, a fruit farmer in Maoming, Guangdong, posted a video saying, “Today’s Guiwei (a variety of lychee) is completely unsalable, collapsing prices, with queues stretching 4 to 5 meters.”
Another farmer nicknamed “Xiaomin” lamented in a video that lychees in Maoming are unsellable even at 1 yuan per 500g, leaving farmers at a loss ([link](https://example.com)).
Videos show that despite queuing for two hours, the high-quality lychees were only purchased at 1.6 yuan, and many lychees still remained unsold ([link](https://example.com)). Some varieties of lychees were even priced at 70 cents per 500g but no one wanted them, forcing farmers to incur losses ([link](https://example.com)). Some had no choice but to feed the lychees to pigs ([link](https://example.com)) or dump truckloads of lychees on the ground ([link](https://example.com)).
Numerous online videos reflect the dismal lychee market in Guangdong. A blogger captured market vendors selling lychees for “10 yuan for 500g” ([screenshot from video]).
The videos of desperate fruit farmers stirred up discussions among netizens nationwide. Some questioned, “If you can’t sell them, why are we asked to pay 7-8 yuan per 500g here?” “You can’t sell them, and we can’t afford them. They are sold for 16 yuan per 500g.” “In Shenzhen, lychees start at 8 yuan per 500g. What went wrong in this whole process!”
Some farmers exposed the chaos in the lychee market, mentioning exorbitant courier fees, buyers aggressively lowering prices, resulting in farmers being unable to sell their lychees, leading to losses for many, while consumers struggle to find affordable lychees.
In fact, the fruit market in China has collapsed this year, with fruit prices plummeting dramatically in many regions, especially for fruits like lychees, cherries, and durians that were once high-priced, with some categories experiencing price drops exceeding fifty percent. Many distributors or farmers are in distress. Durians, known as the king of fruits in mainland China, have seen their prices halved, even becoming a trending topic.