In the meantime, the rose pastries of Yunnan are just growing more and more popular, and not just in China.

Zhang tells the story of a student from Yunnan who was studying in the United Kingdom. He had brought rose pastries with him and was very surprised to find them very popular with his British schoolmates.

Roses. Photo provided to China Daily

He brought in another 100 cakes and sold them for 2.5 pounds ($3.90) each. Since the cakes only cost about 4 yuan each, he made enough money to take care of his living expenses for that semester.

It is a lot cheaper to buy the rose pastries online, where companies such as Jiahua have a flagship store on Taobao, one of China's largest online supermarkets.

Yao Bing and Hu Yongqi contributed to this story.