The city of Yiwu houses China’s largest small commodities market – a chain of mammoth malls displaying samples of consumer-ready goods for export. It’s also where East meets Middle East, with traders switching from Arabic to English and Mandarin in their negotiations with local sellers.

They suggest the peeled off latex faces of a Hollywood special effects studio – dozens of disembodied, headless Santa faces. The armless angel busts, mocked by the massive plastic hands they’re displayed beneath, are creepy too. It’s the botanist’s exhaustive taxonomy of Christmas tree pine needles that classes up the joint, looking decorative in its gilt frame.

Even in April, two and a half hours south of Shanghai by fast train, it’s always Christmas at the Sea of Christmas Gifts, a store in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province.

Most of Yiwu’s export market stores are devoted to particular goods. At International Trade City I, one of the mega malls on the Chouzhou Lu strip, there are stores that sell only: toys that swell in water, the die-cast model planes you can buy in airports, key ring toys shaped like shoes, or crucifixes for mounting on a wall.

Outside the crucifix store we overheard a man bargaining on a big order. He wanted the boxes included free.

If you want a good price on 10,000 plaques inscribed with phrases from the Qur’an, go to Yiwu. While you’re there, you can also pick up souvenirs from around the world – African masks, Korean festival garb, tropical island bamboo instruments. However sacred or special these things might seem to the end consumer, they’re all just units in Yiwu.

They’re cheap though. TALK’s shopping guru Suzy Fewtrell says, “Everything’s just so much cheaper than it is in Shanghai. You can get things for about a quarter the price.”

Her husband Paul travels to Yiwu regularly for business. “Every single small commodity is available in Yiwu,” he says. If you want to buy an individual item, “you just pretend that you need a sample.”

Dining

The city of two million has a vibrant Muslim quarter and restaurants catering to Middle Eastern and international appetites.

The area is called Binwang Shang Mao Quo, but if that’s too hard to remember, you can just look for the giant sign that says “Exotic Street”. There you’ll find eateries with names like Restaurant Damascus Syrian, Cairo Restaurant and Delhi Durban Indian Restaurant. There’s also a bakery with a Xinjiang owner that sells honey-sweet baklava.