Yiwu has everything from scratch.
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I am no stranger to Zhejiang. I have been to many places, but Yiwu is a blank to me. Only in the past six months or so, when I opened Hong Kong Phoenix TV and Beijing CCTV 4 in Hamburg, I often saw advertisements in Yiwu, which aroused my curiosity. I decided to go to Yiwu to see what made this small town so hot.
I went to Yiwu by train from Shanghai, and I was shocked as soon as I got out of the train station. The railway station square is surrounded by new modern high-rise buildings. It is rare to see such a spacious, clean and tidy place. The first impression of a person and a city is very important. We drove to Yiwu Hotel, only to see the green grass and the cars of the world's top brands moving slowly on the blocked road. Which county is this?
Before I arrived in Yiwu, my friend once said that this place was too poor to open a pot before. Farmers own an acre and a half of land on average, and even have difficulty drinking water. They only rely on chicken feathers to exchange needles and buttons. Now, there are all kinds of small commodity markets and daily necessities here, and small businessmen from all over the country come here to rent booths for several kilometers, which is very lively.
Inexplicable but wonderful
I am very lucky to come to Yiwu this time. Wu Weirong, the mayor of Yiwu, and Chen Jialong, my painter colleague, are old friends. He was very busy and came to see us at midnight 10. He said that a leader in Zhejiang Province once commented on Yiwu: "Yiwu has developed inexplicably. Inexplicable, but wonderful. "
He said that Yiwu has a rich business culture. But in the past, the so-called business culture relied on barter, taking plucked chicken feathers to the market and exchanging some daily necessities, forming a small market economy. With the country's reform and opening up, great changes have taken place in many cities and rural areas in China, and so has Yiwu. However, the strategy of Yiwu's economic development has not changed, and it is still commercial transaction and commodity exchange. However, with the evolution of history, the focus of business has changed fundamentally. From small businesses on the street to small markets and big markets. Now, there are not many kilometers of markets, but many commercial cities of different grades.
You're absolutely right. In the afternoon, I went to the market to order red lanterns for this autumn's Hamburg China Cultural Festival and was taken to a commercial building. It turns out that in this huge building, there are countless stalls selling handicrafts and lanterns, only renting a corner of three floors, which has made me breathless.
There are more than a dozen classified commercial cities in the brochure of Yiwu Mall. Only those who deal in textiles can have their own commercial city, which is no less than a seven-or eight-story department store, which dazzles me. It is said that more than 10,000 foreign businessmen have settled in Yiwu. The foreign population exceeds the local population. In 2005, the city's GDP reached 30 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 15%, which sounds staggering.
Mayor Wu said that the city leaders adopted the policy of "doing something but not doing something", that is, businesses with markets are responsible for their own operations, such as finding resources, and the government does not ask. However, the government has managed everything in place, such as urban construction, infrastructure, social security, cultural life, health care and so on. The government should have the ability to regulate the market.
He said that in the 11th Five-Year Plan, Yiwu will establish a municipal library, archives, museums, art galleries and concert halls. The mayor is gentle and handsome. He speaks quietly, but he is confident and logical. The author thinks that this confidence is related to his mood and confidence.
The locals are very satisfied.
In Yiwu, I had private contact with local people, talked about work and life, and found that they were all satisfied. The outflow of Yiwu people not only stopped, but also returned. The biggest feature of Yiwu is that farmers also engage in free trade and small traders. That is, the capitalist tail that was tried to be cut off during the Cultural Revolution is now thicker and bigger. Now Yiwu has become a worldwide commodity base. That sounds scary!
Yiwu used to be dominated by agriculture, but since the development of free trade, only 20,000 of the 670,000 people are still engaged in agricultural production. Villages are no longer scattered in deep mountains and forests, with no electricity, no water and inconvenient transportation, but concentrated in villages and towns.
There are 360 families in Chener Village, a mountainous area bordering neighboring counties. The author has completely lost the old concept of the countryside, because the old, old and shabby houses there have been demolished, modern residential areas have been built, garment processing factories and bamboo products factories have been established, and the houses are all multi-storey buildings.
To my surprise, how can such a modern high-grade house be built in a poor ravine? It is no exaggeration to say that its beauty is no less than the houses near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, USA. Not to mention their luxury villas, which are all multi-storey apartments, if you buy one in Hamburg, it will cost at least 2 million RMB. The mayor told me that they arranged for 32 poor farmers to live in apartment buildings, with an average housing area of 1.20 square meters, a cost of 1 10,000 RMB, and a price of 60,000 RMB, with the balance subsidized by the town government.
I knocked on a big yard. An old lady let us in. The owner used to be a farmer, but later he went to town to do small commodity trading and gradually became rich. Now he is a wealthy businessman in Yiwu. The bright villa living room is covered with artificial marble, with advanced sanitary equipment, modern TV and DVD.
This house is not unique. There are many houses around, with toilets and hot and cold water facilities. What surprises me most is that there are colorful trash cans every 10 meter to 15 meter in this community. The roads are spotless, and the old dirt roads, horse manure and cow dung are all gone, which is a miracle for me. Incredibly, the rural areas in mountainous areas have been completely modernized.
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Yiwu, a model of globalization
[Hong Kong Asia Times Online reported on April 2 1 Sunday] Title: Yiwu: Mother of Small Commodity Market (Reporter Palawi aiyar) Yiwu is not mentioned in China's general travel guide, but this small town in Zhejiang is as worth seeing as the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Terracotta Warriors in Xi: Yiwu's international trade market may be the largest wholesale market for small commodities in the world.
Yiwu commodity market has more than 50,000 shops selling more than 400,000 kinds of products. Yiwu can better reflect China's status as a factory in the world than other places in China. Yiwu market attracts traders from all over the world. Almost everything from African artworks to Indian Buddha statues can be made in China at a lower cost.
Yiwu is known as "the ocean of goods and the paradise of shoppers". It is estimated that there are 8,000 foreign businessmen permanently stationed in Yiwu, and another 200,000 tourists make short-term shopping every year, buying 400,000 containers of various commodities and shipping them around the world.
In the market, we can see people from all over the world, new york and Scots passing by, and the differences of skin color and race become unimportant, because everyone has the same wish, that is, to get a good price as much as possible. When I visited Yiwu market, I saw that businessmen from the Middle East and Pakistan were very eye-catching, and more than a dozen Indians were also choosing goods.
Dash Ram bial is a businessman from Mumbai. In the past three years, he often came to Yiwu, four times a year on average, and bought a container of clothing accessories for each trip. However, what attracted him to Yiwu again and again was not only the low price, but also the diversification of commodity varieties.
He said: "The quality and variety of goods here are not found in India." Ram bial opened a retail store in Mumbai.
Nilesh Shah is also from Mumbai and has been to Yiwu every month for five years. He usually buys half a container of artificial flowers and sends them back to India. He said: "The price is less than half that of Indian products, but the quality is better than that of India."
Various colors are a major feature of Yiwu market. Yiwu market is divided into several floors, and each floor specializes in a certain commodity. For example, in the hardware tools and fitness equipment department, you can find jacks, cheese grinders, treadmills and car pruning shears. The plush toy area is filled with all kinds of stuffed dogs, Santa Claus, Barbie dolls, Snoopy, eggs made by rattlesnakes, kites, balloons and inflatable rafts.
About 70% of Christmas decorations and other items in the world come from atheistic China. Christmas is increasingly inseparable from goods made in China, which is very obvious in Yiwu.
Although Christmas goods are an important part of Yiwu market, there are more than one kind of religious goods sold in this market. The Christmas tree is juxtaposed with Hindu idols, and the boundaries of sects have become blurred here.
There is a booth selling statues of the Virgin Mary, the Elephant God and the Goddess of Wisdom at the same time. The stall owner explained that these statues are all made in Yiwu, a few kilometers away from the market. A religious idol of standard size ranges from 10 to 14 yuan, but the price can be negotiated if it is purchased in bulk.
This booth is located in the souvenir area. This floor can supply all gift shops in the world. The "African Sculpture" on display here is from Henan, and the decorative "Champagne" bottle is from Guangzhou.
As a model of globalization, Yiwu is now threatened by the wind of protectionism blowing from the western world. Accusing China of manipulating the exchange rate and calling for imposing trade quotas and import tariffs on China's exports have become frequent topics.
The mayor of Yiwu emphasized that the cheap export goods from China benefited enterprises and consumers all over the world. All foreign businessmen who come to Yiwu market are smiling. Judging from this, the mayor's words may be right.
(originally published in the reference message on April 25th) /view/ 128020.html? wtp=tt