trade rekindles Silk Road in China city

Source: Yiwu sourcing agent    Author: Gary      Date: 2008-03-27

Yiwu, China, March 12 (Reuters Life) Tens of thousands of Middle Eastern traders and businessmen crowd the eastern Chinese city of Yiwu every year to transforming this small eastern corner of China into a buzzing trading post.

With the influx of Middle Eastern money, Yiwu, a city of 2 million people in eastern Zhejiang province, has been slowly transformed in recent years to become a major trading hub between China and the Middle East, a new Silk Road linking their economies. Every Friday, the main mosque here offers a glimpse of how well the business is doing here. There are buyers from Lebanon, traders from Yemen, businessmen from Egypt, all gathering for their weekly prayers.

Many of them have come straight from the wholesale markets across the city and will very often return straight to business after their religious duties. Palestinian businessman Hazem Shyoukhi,30,was one of the first people to make the long trek to Yiwu in 2000.

Back then, the city was just starting out to position itself as a hub for trading small commodities in the country. Looking at makeshift stalls selling everything from toothbrushes to belts at a local wholesale market, Hazem has fond memories of the beginnings of his career. “From 2000, Yiwu was like a small village. Now it is a big city,with a lot of foreigners, a lot of Muslim people . Because of business here, everything has changed,” he said .

With the arrival of Middle Eastern traders and money, Yiwu slowly branched out to become a hub for selling made-in-China Arabic products, such as fashion apparel and religious artefacts .The city has not looked back since . Many of the traders like Hazem have set up shop here, offering trading services for Middle Eastern buyers looking for cheap and good Chinese products. The traders are usually young Middle Eastern men who have ventured here first as buyers, sourcing for a steady supply of daily household products that have simply become inaccessible in some of the conflict zones in the Middle East.

Armed with nothing but a keen business sense, many of them have made good here, learning how to speak English and Mandarin along the way to carving out a successful trading career. With Yiwu today, businessmen say the advantage is that the price is right and buyers are also able to procure items in the quantities they want. “There are many Arabic businessmen who come here to do business because Yiwu is very famous. Also, our Arabic customers come here to Yiwu and not to other places, because they are able to buy items here in small amounts and not be restricted to big quantities,” said another businessman, Lebanese Ali Husseini,30,in fluent Mandarin.

With the business side of things booming, Yiwu has also transformed itself to become an ideal home for the families of the Middle Eastern traders based here. Hazem Shyoukhi walks upstairs everyday in his villa home-office to the comforts of a home-made lunch with his wife and three daughters. He moved his family here last year from Hebron and was worried they might not be able to adjust to the local culture. But his worries proved unfounded, as his wife has settled well here and his daughters are now attending local schools. “Now I am very comfortable because the situation here is not like Palestine,” said 25-year-old Shirien Shyoukhi. “In Palestine, the environment is very tense . As you know the Israelis control everything, even the economy is under their control. So I have found life more comfortable here.

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