Santa Claus workshop: Chinese city where New Year is created and sold

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And no, this is not a frame from a horror movie, this is a Chinese factory for the production of toys and decorations for the new year. In fact, this is the Chinese "maternity hospital" of the New Year for the whole world! Just think, it is here, in the town of Yiwu, that more than 80% of all Christmas decorations are produced.

Red is on the ceiling and red is on the floor, red drips from the window sills, and red balls are sprayed on the walls. This is what the creation of Christmas looks like; it is the very heart of the workshop of a real Santa - thousands of miles from the North Pole, in the Chinese city of Yiwu.

Our favorite fairy tales could imagine that Christmas is created by pink-cheeked elves threshing in a snow-covered log cabin somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle. But this is not the case. Most likely, most of these trinkets, tinsel and flashing LED lights that you have thrown around your house abundantly came from Yiwu, 300 km south of Shanghai, where there is no (real) pine trees, no (natural) snowflakes.

Yiwu, dubbed the "Christmas village of China," has more than 600 factories that collectively produce more than 80% of all Christmas decorations and accessories in the world, from glowing fiber-optic Christmas trees to Santa hats. The "elves" who work in these factories are mostly migrant workers who work 12 hours a day for a maximum of $300-400 a month- and it turns out they're not quite sure they know what Christmas is.

The Yiwu International Trade Fair, known as China Commodity City, has been recognized by the UN as "the largest wholesale market for small goods in the world", and the scale of the operation requires a kind of urban plan, with this trade festival being held in five different districts. In the second district, in particular, you can celebrate Christmas. Corridors decorated only with tinsel, streets teeming with competing LED light shows, Santa socks of any size, plastic Christmas trees in blue and yellow and fluorescent pink, plastic pine cones made of gold and silver. Some of this seems lost in translation: sheep in Santa hats and tartan-embroidered reindeer, and, of course, a lot of unexplained Chinese staple, Santa Claus playing the saxophone.

The bright sales representatives of the Yiwu market couldn't help but seem happier with their life sentence - eternal Christmas. According to Cheng Yapin, co-founder of the Boyan Craft Factory, who runs a kiosk decorated in the form of a miniature winter wonderland: "Sitting here every day and being able to look at all these beautiful decorations is really great for your mood." Somehow it is unlikely that those who are at the other end of the production line, dipping snowflakes in workshops littered with red so that we can pick them up at the checkout of the store "all for 50 rubles", felt exactly the same.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected this business as well. Yiwu also faced difficulties - this year a large number of goods were stuck in this eastern city, waiting to be shipped to foreign markets. Despite the fact that orders are recovering as the COVID-19 pandemic weakens in 2021, there is an acute shortage of shipping containers, and transportation prices are increasing several times.

Freight prices for 40-foot containers from China/East Asia to the east coast of North America exceeded $20,000, an increase of about 5 times compared to last year, according to Freightos Baltic Index, an indicator of global rates for container transportation.

He Jun, head of Yiwu Luochen Crafts Trading Co Ltd, said that the company's orders increased by 50 percent compared to last year, but such a large number of Santa Claus figures and dolls is difficult to deliver at once. To avoid "traffic jams" on the roads, some Christmas decorations went to Western markets much earlier than usual. CCTV news reported that the peak export season for Yiwu ports came in advance in the second quarter of this year (although it is usually the third quarter).

The increase in raw material prices is also a concern for producers of Iu. Prices for materials for Christmas trees increased by 30-40 percent compared to the previous year. According to the Ministry of Commerce, from January to July 2021, China's imports and exports reached a record high of 9.68 trillion yuan, an increase of 24.4% year-on-year. However, uncertainties and risks in the global supply chain in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic were also highlighted: instead of shipping, some goods to Russia or the Middle East were exported overland, which affected the price.

But nevertheless, nothing can stop the approach of the New Year. At least, the Chinese Christmas forge has made every effort to ensure that the holiday atmosphere comes to every home in the world on time.

Sources - bbc.com // theguardian.com // global.chinadaily.com