Options for lunch are abundant; as a legacy of the Middle-Eastern contingent of businessmen there are some excellent Arabic restaurants in town providing tasty meals in friendly surroundings. There are also a few Korean restaurants, again catering predominantly for the resident population of Korean businessmen, that provide authentic delicious food. The local area also specializes in a number of interesting Tofu dishes. Nowadays there are numerous coffee shops and tea houses providing respite from the retail vigour, and serving a decent mix of Chinese and Western foods.

In the afternoon I took a taxi across town to the International Trade City on Chaozhou Bei Road. This market is gigantic and provides the retail junky with the summer blessing of air-conditioning. Divided over 3 floors there are several thousand small shops here selling everything from cuddly toys to jewelry. The sheer variety of goods is overwhelming and during one cursory visit I felt that I could only touch the tip of this market's proverbial iceberg. Some of the bargains here included vases at 11 yuan , hair ties 4.5 yuan for a bag of 40 and Christmas and Birthday balloons starting at 11.6 for bags of 200.

Many of the stalls in Yiwu only sell to you in bulk and therefore unless you are buying big quantities you need to hunt for shops that have the Tourism Shopping Appointed Booth mark above their doors. This sign is white and blue with a horse-like creature in the centre. This mark means that at this shop you can buy in small quantities, very handy for the passing browser.

Having exhausted my browsing ability I went for a potter around the city and found the long-distance truck loading bays. It is here that those leviathan blue trucks are loaded up with their mountain of cheap goods and sent on their way to destinations all over China. I tracked down a few trucks that were truly in for the long haul, one heading up north into Russia and another Southwest to Nepal, wow what a trip.

The markets here in Yiwu are famous for selling an abundance of small commodities at cheap prices and this they certainly do. What surprised me most was the convenience of the whole experience. Yiwu is not large so the distances between the markets can be covered quickly by taxi, especially as the basic rate for taxis is only 5 yuan. The stall holders are on the whole warm and friendly, some of them eager to practice their English and help explain the attractions of their products. Unlike at other markets you feel comfortable browsing here, the pressure to buy if you so as merely glance at an object is not there.

The Yiwu experience is an extremely enjoyable one and well worth a busy day trip or overnight stay on the weekend from Hangzhou. Yiwu is above all a market town and you sense that if the locals could they simply wouldn't sleep, but instead continue trading their wares through the night. In Yiwu everyday is market day.

Quick facts about Yiwu

Population

650,000

Location

At the eastern end of the Jin-Qu basin in central Zhejiang Province, 94 km (58 miles) south of Hangzhou.

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