Wholesale Delight

As the city doing more than any other to keep “made in China” ubiquitous worldwide, few people visit Yiwu unless they are looking to trade in low-cost goods. However, as a visitor, the city offers eye-opening experiences and unique scenes that can’t be found anywhere else. 　

Yiwu is in eastern Zhejiang, a wealthy coastal province that boasts commercial powerhouses like Hangzhou, Ningbo and Wenzhou. Back in the 1600s, impoverished Yiwu was known for sewing needles and bamboo baskets. Today, you can still buy needles and baskets, but the city now has a multibillion-dollar economy. 

The market touts 75,000 stalls where 100,000 suppliers sell a multiplicity of products. It is divided into five districts covering 6.4 million square meters, each of which has distinct categories. District 1 houses toys, jewelry accessories and ornaments, District 2 has bags, hardware, electronic equipment and car accessories, District 3 has stationery, sports equipment, and cosmetics, District 4 is socks, shoes, and textiles, and finally District 5 is beddings and curtains. 　

The districts aren’t sections of a building. You’ll need to grab a cab or two if you want to sample more than one district in one day. And I say “sample,” because seeing an entire district is more than a day’s work itself. People say that if one spends eight hours a day shopping and five minutes at each stall, it would take over 8 months to go through the whole market.　

Walking down the aisles of this sprawling four-floor building of popular District 1, you might feel like you’ve fallen through the rabbit hole. Countless permutations of grinning dolls, transforming plastic robots, ray-guns that whizz and pop, costume jewelry stalls that glitter like a thrifty dragon’s hoard, a cornucopia constantly updated to meet the shifting tastes of a global market. 

Most stalls are wholesale-only, and the few that offer retail have signs indicating the fact. This is a place where orders are counted by the thousand. Shopkeepers are so busy packing goods, they don’t have time for the patter that draws in punters. The sound of shredding packaging tape resounded through the whole mall, like horses being lashed to run faster and never stop. 

But even this gigantic market can’t hold everything. There are other wholesale markets featuring hot products like Jiangbei Xiazhu, known as the country’s “top livestreaming e-commerce village.” This urban village provides a complete supply chain for those who want to hawk goods on camera, including training courses for hosts. Every shop has a device constantly sharing its coming-and-goings with an online audience, like a portal that takes you into a world of pure consumption. If you are a gold-seeking influencer, this is a place of worship. 　

One mall’s exterior crows its goal of “collecting the superfines from the worlds, developing the friendship with all clients” in English and Chinese. This naked ambition might not be obvious when you chat to those manning the market stalls, who are down-to-earth and unpretentious. But the fruits of “collecting the superfines” is clear at 6 pm, when convoys of Porsches, Land Rovers, Mercedes and BMWs trail out of the markets’ parking lots – often with boxes of goods spilling out of the trunk onto the back seat. 　

Just a short trip from the markets, new glass skyscrapers crowd together in the city’s nascent CBD, with the 215-meter World Trade Center as a centerpiece, though it noticeably lacks the frenetic activity of the older markets. Wandering away from the glass and steel, the skyline shrank down to three-stories, shirtless men on motorbikes puff cigarettes at red lights, mothers holler at kids cavorting on the sidewalk and signs offering logistics services are peppered with Russian and Arabic. 

Out of Yiwu’s 1.9 million residents, foreigners comprise 21,000, and people from overseas make some 370,000 visits to the city annually. Around 500 restaurants around the city are run by non-Chinese. This has created an “exotic food street” in the Binwang neighborhood, where perhaps you can find the most authentic Middle Eastern food in China as well as many other international flavors. You can dine on Turkish, Indian, Syrian, Russian, Thai, Japanese, Brazilian or American in a culinary United Nations. 　

If you feel tired of the hustle and bustle of modern business, you can take a cab for about 20 minutes to Fotang Ancient Town located in Yiwu’s southwest, including its Buddha Hall. According to legend, a flood struck the area during the Liang Dynasty (502-557). At the time, a monk from India was visiting, and to rescue the people trapped by the flood, he threw himself into the river and turned into a ferry. To memorialize his sacrifice, the locals built the temple. 　

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, a large number of merchants trading along the Yiwu River gathered in Fotang. While the gravity of local trade has moved away, it is still a well-preserved example of a historic town. Unlike many other so-called old towns around China, it can actually boast a great number of original structures. Black-tiled, white-walled “Hui style” wooden houses with horse-head roofs line nearly two kilometers of cobblestone streets. Many are still used as shops, with low wooden counters surviving from a previous era, with the family living on the second floor, just as it was centuries before. 　

The most famous house is the Wuqi Ji Residential House. The three-floor wooden house was built in 1935 in Ming and Qing architectural style, and besides a flourishing, green garden, it contains delicate wood carvings featuring folk stories, flora and fauna and landscapes. They cover doors, windows, pillars, eaves, parapets and even the covert exit. 　

Another unique Fotang building is the Xinhua Theater, built in 1954. The rain-washed, gray facade is carved with three Red Army soldiers holding a gun, weaving flag and pointing to the front. The red paint faded but still clear, evoking the days when the People’s Republic of China had just been founded. A red stage under a high wooden ceiling faces dozens of red tables with simple, narrow benches. It is used to show movies, hold conventions and host Chinese opera performances.