Be still my beating heart! From The Irish Times:
Where Santa stocks up on stockings
With 62,000 stalls, the Yiwu market is the wholesale face of China's massive factories, selling everything under the sun to the West, Muslim immigrants - and Santa Claus, writes CLIFFORD COONAN in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, China
TO YOUR left, esteemed customers - artificial flowers, cuddly toys, fashion jewellery, hair accessories, jewellery fittings, and arts and crafts items. To your right, moving down this endless row of stalls: photograph frames, crystal, and buckets and spades in lurid reds and yellows.
Go up a floor and you've got bags, wallets, hardware, kitchenware, bikes, watches clocks, locks, scooters and home appliances. Not far from here you can see the factories where large percentages of the world's zips, buttons, packaging materials and accessories are made.
Here in Yiwu, the world's biggest wholesale market, crazy-eyed leprechauns, Tom and Jerry, the Pink Panther and Yosemite Sam beam out from one of 62,000 stalls. This busy city in eastern China is the factory outlet for the planet's manufacturing epicentre.
This where Santa Claus comes to shop, particularly in a recession when money is tight and the generous old gent has to tighten that already straining belt across his red-clad girth.
"You need to come up with different products, to make sure they are popular in all kinds of difficult markets," says stallholder Jin Fang, cheerfully embracing a huge World Cup teddy bear.
The Yiwu wholesale market is the public face of the greatest experiment in mass production ever seen, selling the produce from the world's five biggest sock manufacturers and the largest zip factory. This market has, quite literally, everything. It is the kind of place that makes you fear for the world's dwindling resources because so much iron ore, copper and plastic seem to have ended up here, transformed into knick-knacks.
Standing guard at one stall is an enormous World Cup South Africa 2010 mascot. It's not just Santa Claus who shops here - you can bet that the marketing gurus who trail in his wake will be sourcing green-jerseyed mascots here to beat the band if Ireland ever qualify for South Africa. They also make the funny big hands here. And the comical Viking hats. And whistles. Rattles. Giant bananas. Sometimes it feels like everything is made in Yiwu. Maybe Robbie Keane was made here.
There are 320,000 different commodities on sale, in more than 1,500 categories, within 34 industries. These are spread throughout the city, but are concentrated in four vast wholesale markets, with four million-plus square metres of selling space, shipping to more than 200 countries. City mayor Li Xuhang has pointed out that if you gave each supplier three minutes during an average eight hours of doing business, you would need more than a year to get around the market.
The hell with the Yiwu market, I want to go to Shenzhen for the 75th China Electronics Fair this coming April. Not a market; an entire city... With incredible food... And a couple hours from Hong Kong with even better food... Come back penniless and fat -- with the dark winter skies and constant rain these days, I can't think of a better way to blow my savings.
