Once, while drinking skimmed milk in a trendy café (yes, I don’t drink coffee), I heard a popular television host shrieking in delight while discussing with her friend what a steal she had just made while shopping at the said mall. She, in fact, clandestinely took out blouses and brassieres from her plastic bags and showed them to her friend. I was not impressed.
A lady politician, during a photo shoot, told me how happy she was to have learned that the mall had finally opened again after it was closed for 40 days. She even enticed me to go to that "shopping mecca" and "shop till you drop." I did not heed her advice.
Yes, to this day, I haven’t been to 168 (this number combination is considered by Chinese, especially by the merchants, as the luckiest for it means "road to success."). But last week, upon the invitation of Quanzhou Chamber of Commerce, I went to Yiwu, a bustling city in the province of Zhejiang in China, where all the products being sold at 168 are from. Yiwu – which is sandwiched by two of China’s busiest seaports, Ningpo to the Southeast and Shanghai to its northeast – is the biggest export area in the whole world according to Chen Wen Sheng, the 38-year-old vice president of the Chamber. How this happened can be explained by what marketing scientists call "market specialization." In the early ’80s, Yiwu – with a total land area of 1,105 square km. and now has a total population of 1.6 million – was eyed by the economic planners of China to be the mega-hub of production that would supply to developing countries. Since 1992, it has been supplying goods to 150 countries, with the Middle East and South America as the top buyers. The Philippines started to buy Chinese products in big volumes in 1995.
Roaming around Yiwu is like going around the world. Why not when you get to meet or bump into people of different nationalities in the city’s mega trade centers. About 30,000 foreign buyers go around the more than 50,000 shops in Yiwu every single day. In this place, you hear Arab-looking men, Indian ladies, even Caucasians that speak Chinese complete with the intonation and other nuances that go with the language. (And I thought English was the world’s only lingua franca. Anytime soon, if my estimation will prove me correct, Chinese will be the ultimate language of commerce. And this thought has inspired me to take up Mandarin lessons soon.)
Inside China Yiwu International Trade City, one of the many mega-trade complexes in the area, there are thousands and thousands of stalls selling toys, shoes, clothes, hardware items, décor materials, kitchen ware, even nail polish, nails and tacks, spikes and pegs. There are even rubber bands of all colors that will definitely surpass the ROYGBIV bands of the rainbow. For each item, there is a factory in Yiwu that makes it. And at the trade center, each item has its own designated section, just like in any mall. Only, one section here is comparable to one mall in the Philippines. Maybe I’m exaggerating. But it’s really humongous that I got blisters on my feet walking from one section to another; and we’re talking about almost a hundred sections here selling wholesale!
Yes, wholesale. I got the biggest shock of my life when I wanted to buy seven pieces of lovely dolls for my nieces. The courteous Chinese lady stall owner told me in broken English: "We sell by container vans." I almost collapsed.
Even in Yiwu, Christianity is alive! No, they are not Catholics but they make religious images in resin, even paintings or carvings of "The Last Supper." And they make Christmas trees, too –there’s the usual green tree, white tree, even blue and yellow trees. You can have them – by containers, of course – with or without boughs, with or with out lights, with or without icicles, reindeers, angels or little drummer boys. Santa Clauses, in this section of the trade center, are forever in a ho-ho-ho mood, symbolic that it’s business as usual every day.
Yiwu goods are unbelievably cheap. The beautiful dolls I fell in love with are pegged at four yuans (P28) a piece. In a retail store, I bought a pair of China-made rubber shoes for 55 yuans (P385). (Credit cards are not accepted here.) Yiwu sells by the bulk. The price range of which, I was told, when computed, is more than three times lower than the Philippine-manufactured items.
The products from this city are distributed to the Philippines by Quanzhou traders. On a monthly basis, they ship about 1,000 40-foot containers of assorted products to Manila for distribution in Divisoria, Baclaran and Cebu among other markets in every nook and cranny of the Philippines. According to the Chamber, the big shopping malls all over the Philippines have assigned buying agents to Yiwu.
Prices of commodities, food included, are cheap in Yiwu because, the Chamber said, all the raw materials are domestically sourced and the units of machinery they use are locally-designed. On top of that, there’s no basic salary requirement for their employees. There’s no strike. The city’s more than 200,000 workers do not plot work stoppage. No work, no pay. One’s income is determined by one’s productivity. A worker gets at least a salary of 1,500 yuans (P10,500) a month. He gets more than this if he produces some more. Thus, in this city that is characterized by can-do economic development, it is a common sight that a factory owner and his family work hand in hand with their employees. The employees are happy and espouse dignity of labor. Almost all of them do not complain about the setup. Why would they when they have a government that takes care of their basic needs – free or within their budget’s reach?
Anyway, going back to 168, I am now very interested to visit this mall. Perhaps, if not for the merchandise the mall offers, the place will be a very good venue for a get-together among the Filipino and Chinese people I met in Yiwu. After all, friendship is the most precious purchase we all made in Yiwu.
(Thank you for your letters. I can be reached at bumbaki@yahoo.com. You may also snail mail me at The Philippine Star c/o Allure Section, R. Oca corner Railroad Streets, Port Area, Manila. Have a blessed Sunday!)