One year in a Chinese shopping center
The holiday season is well underway at a shopping center in the Chinese city of Yiwu. Garlands, toys and jolly old men dressed in red are on display in almost all its 60,000 stalls. The complex, which is very similar to Russian shopping centers, is famous for its size - it covers more than four million square meters. Walking through the entire shopping center, and stopping at each stall for at least three minutes, would take a whole year.
The shop windows are packed will all kinds of goods, from little things like lighters and zippers to clothes and large remote-control toys. The shopping mall draws city residents, tourists and foreign businessmen alike. The goods are mostly made right here in Yiwu, and they eventually make it to store shelves in Europe, the U.S. and Russia.
As Yiwu is a global hub for consumer goods, multimillion-dollar purchases through the holiday season are made right here. Town residents are in some sense the holiday-season trend-setters, but they are willing to adapt to the market.
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