A decade ago Yiwu is only a small city not-know outside its Zhejiang province. Nowadays it has become the biggest market of its type in China, surpassing Guangzhou & Fujian in this regard. It is a miracle. There are many reasons behind but you can learn what is Yiwu now briefly from this English site (also in French as it is written by a French buyer company Nira based in Yiwu):
http://www.yiwu-china.org/yiwu_markets.html
Here is a list of goods made by Nira on what you can get from China in their best price and variety:
- Arts and crafts market (gifts made of glass/wood/metal, 3D crystal items, beads, Christmas products, and other decoration items)
- artificial flowers market
- Stationery market (ball pens, fountain pens, advertising pens, pencils, erasers, pen boxes, files, and all kinds of stationeries)
- Sport and other leisure (fishing, music,...) markets
- Clocks and watches market
- Eyeglasses and sunglasses market
- Kitchen and bathroom hardware market (plastic market)
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- Fashion jewellery market (rings, earrings, necklaces, hairpins, bracelets, ankle bracelets, toe rings, tattoos, artificial locks, wigs, all types of ornaments...)
- Mobile phones accessories market (mobile phones boxes, parts, cordons, ornaments,...)
- Small home appliances/ small electronic products market (FM radios, voice recorders, CD/VCD/DVD/MP3 players, earphones, microphones,...)
- Bags and leather products market (bags, belts, wallets, purses,...)
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Here are some photos from ymt.com.cn for your inspiration:
This picture was taken in 2002 and now all buildings are housing manufacturer showrooms. An array of wholesale mega malls. See the number of cranes poping up the sky, feel like viewing Shanghai in early 90's.
Not every manufacturer can affort renting a place in those mega malls. So you can treasure hunt in many old streets if you have time and energy. This following pic shows a street view in 2003. It looks the same on countless wholesale streets in China, Taiwan, & Korea. The major difference is the factories are now all in China. So you guess which country can give you a better price.
There are already many Yiwu sellers registered on Alibaba. So before you pack for a trip, go search them out and speak to them first. May be you will get a free tour guide showing you around the tourist spots
![[em1]](http://img.alibaba.com/images/eng/style/icon/emoticons_smile.gif)