Small commodity market busy after holiday

On the first business day after the lunar new year holiday, Wei Huanglan checked emails for overseas orders and posted online pictures of the latest products, with descriptions in both Chinese and English.

Wei owns a home decor shop in the China Commodities City, one of the busiest shopping centers worldwide.

The commodity market, in Yiwu of Zhejiang Province, reopened on Tuesday, and nearly 77 percent of shops started operations after a two-week closure for the traditional holiday.

Wei earned 10,000 yuan (about 1,530 U.S. dollars) in her first post-holiday sale through Yiwubuy, a website that hosts e-stores for all 75,000 vendors in the market.

"My business reached North America last year through the online platform," Wei said. "My peacock-shaped curtain buckles were sold to the United States like hot cakes."

Many foreign buyers, however, still visit the brick-and-mortar stores, which saw more than 200,000 visits as of Tuesday afternoon.

Abdo Mohammed, a Yemeni businessman who works in exports and has lived in Yiwu for 12 years, placed an order of brooms and hangers in fluent Chinese.

Sven Oppel, a German businessman, shopped for home decor at the market. "I visit the market twice a year," Oppel said, "I plan to stay for a week this time."

Covering a business area of 5.5 million square meters, the market sells more than 1.8 million types of consumer goods, and has vendors selling 77,000 products from more than 100 countries and regions.

"The total turnover exceeded 98 billion yuan in 2015, an increase of 14.6 percent year on year," said Hu Yanhu, vice president of Zhejiang China Commodities City Group Co., Ltd. Endi