Chapter 2 Feel the "No. 1 City in China"

Every inch of the land here will make people feel its wealth, so rich that the ground is covered with gold, and the mountains of gold shine on the faces of everyone here, they are so proud, so calm, and so easily put themselves Become a multi-millionaire, a billionaire... The people here tell me that if you work hard, you can become a multi-millionaire in three to five years; if you work hard, you can become a billionaire in three to five years; , you may be a tycoon galloping in the international business world - the property of the tycoon can jump to the list of the world's richest people.

The people here smiled at me with a copy of the latest "100 Rich List" and said: No, this is too inaccurate!There are at least dozens of wealthy businessmen here who could enter this ranking, but they didn't. In fact, those so-called rich survey agencies don't even know who is the richest here. Ah!This is Yiwu.This is China's Yiwu, a Chinese Yiwu where farmers started by making small commodities, a place of incredible wealth. Relying on the fresh market, this city performed a legend that shocked the world.In just 20 years, it has transformed from a poor agricultural county into an international commercial city that affects the world's small commodity market, realizing the great ideal of "buy the world, sell the world".It has created a veritable "world supermarket" with 420,000 kinds of small commodities and an annual turnover of nearly 40 billion yuan!The customs here export 1,000 standard containers every day, and 400,000 containers transport more than 400,000 kinds of goods to more than 200 countries and regions every year. There are 8,000 representatives of major businesses in the world camping here for many years!

In the past 20 years, the average annual growth rate of GDP here has reached 24%, which is 15 percentage points higher than the national development level! Yiwu, one of the most profitable places in China!A place to make money from all over the world!A place where people from all over the world make money! You can't believe that this place used to be a completely "nothing" place: neither the sea nor the edge, the Central Zhejiang Basin has inconvenient transportation; there are no resources, and the per capita cultivated land is scarce; there is no industrial base.The only thing left in the memory of Chinese people in Yiwu at the beginning is the sound of rattle drums of "chicken feathers for sugar".

But today, 20 years later, everyone who comes to Yiwu will admire the size of the market here.Someone once made such a calculation: If you want to visit all the 50 specialized markets and specialized streets in Yiwu, it takes 8 hours a day to visit each stall for 1 minute, and you need to walk the entire Yiwu market for 120 days. Yiwu, the largest shopping mall in the world! Similarly, everyone who has been to Yiwu will ask a question, this question is: how do the people here get rich? There are a lot of articles about Yiwu market and its operation now, but for how this market came to be, and what happened to the billionaires yesterday, take a look at the author who spent more than 3 months investigating and interviewing 8 years ago You will enjoy reading the first-hand materials you get—for me, who has lived in the capital Beijing for a long time, when someone told me for the first time that there is a "China's No. 1 City" in a small place in China, It was a bit funny; but it was soon confirmed that this is indeed a fact. In the three or four months between the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999, due to work needs, I shuttled back and forth between Beijing, Shenzhen, Hainan and southern Jiangsu, experiencing China's capital, special economic zone, large special zone and the city known as the reform and opening up. After South Jiangsu, one of the most dynamic areas, I came to Yiwu, a little-known small city in the middle of Zhejiang, twice. What I didn’t expect was that I really saw the real "China No. 1" here. City" - a city that outperforms others with its prosperity and vitality.

In Shenzhen and Hainan, perhaps it has gone through its most glorious era, and perhaps it has not yet emerged from the shadow of the financial turmoil in Southeast Asia. In short, I am not as excited by its prosperity and prosperity as I was in the past. All are peaceful, or the business atmosphere is obviously a bit depressed. Southern Jiangsu is my hometown. In the past few years, I have devoted great enthusiasm to it and praised it many times with my pen.But when I walked through Yiwu and looked at my hometown again, I had to admit somewhat sadly: Today’s Yiwu people, no matter from the external intuition or the deep-level substantive content, have surpassed the southern Jiangsu area. And at least 5 years or even a longer distance...

Although there is no place that can be compared with the capital Beijing, there is one thing that makes me ponder and surprise: In the past few years, Beijing has built one after another large shopping malls, each of which is better than the other in terms of scale and luxury. After the opening of the shopping mall, the situation is not satisfactory. There are many places that are deserted and closed after a short time."Xinwantong Plaza" located on the side of the Second Ring Road is an example. However, this new commercial building, which is first-class in terms of grade, scale, and terrain, had to close down less than two years after it opened. It made the people in the nearby capital sigh. On New Year's Day in 1999, when I passed by this place again, I saw that "Xin Wantong" had been transformed into a "small department store wholesale market".Unable to withstand the temptation of the crowds, when I walked into the building, I couldn't help being pleasantly surprised, because the commercial atmosphere here is far better than those old famous streets of Xidan and Wangfujing, and it has become a commercial building that Beijingers are eager to go.After careful inquiry, what is even more surprising is that one-third of the owners who support the prosperous commercial buildings in the capital are from Yiwu, and almost half of the commodities that fascinate the people in the capital come from thousands of miles away. Yiwu City!

It is not acceptable to be dissatisfied.With the development of the times, we can no longer follow the traditional concept when discussing who is a hero.Don't you see, a young Bill Gates computer kingdom can actually reach the entire output value and profits of dozens or even hundreds of large state-owned enterprises in China; don't you see, why is there always some people in Japan, a small country, who refuse to accept it? Willing to lower the head of militarism, it is because it is backed by the financial resources and technology of ten or twenty countries superior to yours; don't we also have one or two brands like "Chunlan" and "Haier" that are worth a certain amount of money? Do these provinces account for almost or more than half of the GNP?

Yiwu people are becoming such a role in the lives of our 1.3 billion Chinese people.Whether you admit it or not, this is already an indisputable fact! There is already a small commodity wholesale market with the largest scale in the country; There is a "Langsha" socks factory run by 3 brothers. The socks produced in a year can supply 1.3 billion people to wear a pair of socks a year; A small town called Dachen here can supply all Chinese people with a shirt of high quality and fashionable style every three years; Here...there are countless "National No. 1"s that have already quietly entered our lives. Believe it or not, only those who have been to Yiwu and can observe carefully will approve of this.

I applaud Yiwu as "China's No. 1 City", neither because it has ranked first in business sales for seven consecutive years among tens of thousands of professional markets across the country, nor because it is a modern city that has risen almost overnight. How the city shines with dazzling brilliance in the middle of Zhejiang, but I can feel it from a few things I have seen and seen-the first time I felt excited about Yiwu was that the owner here personally led me to that boundless place. In the boundless world of commodities, he proudly slid his foot in place and said, "The selling price of land here is as high as 69,000 yuan per square meter!" 69,000 yuan per square meter?Then the owner who set up a store here would have to pay more than 500,000 yuan just to buy such a small piece of land?When I took a deep breath, the owner smiled smartly and said that although the owner paid more, if he can get such a treasured land, he will earn more!Later, I checked the information and found out that the land price in the prime location of Shenzhen has always been the highest in China. There was an astronomical figure of 72,000 yuan for 1 square meter at auction, but that was 10 years ago. Now let alone Shenzhen, it is the most prosperous place in Hong Kong. It is rare super news that commercial land can be offered at a price of 50,000 yuan per square meter.But the 69,000 yuan per square meter in Yiwu happened in 1998.There is a saying that if you don't leave a cent of silver on Changjie in a poor city, you can sell an inch of land in an expensive city for tons of gold.It can be seen that the "city" of Yiwu has a high gold content.

The second thing is my feelings along the way to Yiwu at the beginning of this year.It was past 10 o'clock when I got off the plane and left Hangzhou City that night. It took nearly 3 hours to travel from the West Lake to Yiwu.I originally thought I could take a nap all the way, but I couldn't because my eyes were completely infected by the bustling scene of traffic on the road, and this feeling reminded me of my visit to the United States from New York to the United States a year ago. That night in Washington.Although the road from Hangzhou to Yiwu is far worse than the expressway from New York to Washington, how can such a constant flow of vehicles make people respect Yiwu, a little-known "city"?From this, I also think of the situation of not seeing a car for a few minutes or even ten minutes while driving on the Beijing-Tianjin Expressway at the same time.So although that night was full of dust and dust, it greatly deepened my true understanding and understanding of Yiwu City.

What is a "city"?Only the kind of place with thoroughfare, merchants gathering, and always prosperous place is the real city. Yiwu is such a commercial city that people praise from the bottom of their hearts.The city of Yiwu is not only in the vision of tall buildings and mansions, roads and shopping malls that you can see, but also in the benefits that you can buy more types and higher quality goods than other places with the same money.What’s more, you can feel it from the space here, from the atmosphere here, from every speeding vehicle here, from every shrewd face and every casual word here…