Yiwu is one of the stranger cities in China, and that is saying something. About a hundred kilometres south of Hangzhou, it has grown into the world's largest wholesale market for small commodities — the place where almost every cheap item in the world, from plastic keyrings to LED strip lights to artificial Christmas trees, begins its journey outward. The International Trade City spans five districts and millions of square metres of stalls, and the sheer scale of it is a spectacle in its own right.
The city's trading culture has drawn tens of thousands of merchants from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, giving Yiwu an unusually international texture for a small Chinese city. There are mosques, Arabic-language signs, halal restaurants, and entire blocks that feel more like a Levantine trading city than anything you'd expect to find in Zhejiang. The Binwang Muslim Quarter and surrounding streets give a more manageable taste of this world than the vast official market complex.
Just outside Yiwu, in the town of Hengdian, sit the Hengdian World Studios: a working film complex with an enormous backlot of historical recreations, including a full-scale replica of the Forbidden City, used for shooting Chinese period dramas. Thousands of extras — many of them aspiring actors who have moved to Hengdian for the work — drift through the sets in costume, and visitors can wander the sets between shoots for the price of an admission ticket.