Yiwu is a city of about 1,000,000 people in central Zhejiang Province in the People's Republic of China.

History

        Yiwu was founded in the Qin dynasty, at or about 222 BC. Yiwu's long history flourished as early as the Neolithic Age. Yiwu first became a county in the year 222BC and was renamed Yiwu County in the year 624 AD. In May 1988, the former Yiwu County was upgraded to a county-level city. In 1995, Yiwu ranked the 47th among China's 100 most powerful counties/cities regarding comprehensive economic strength and in the same year listed as Zhejiang's sole city among the nation's experimental counties/cities of comprehensive reform. In 2001, the Yiwu overall economy ranked 19th of all counties (cities) of China.

        Yiwu's early culture has given birth to many great figures in the fields of literature, art, military, education, and engineering. Among these were Chen Wangdao, China's first translator of the Communist Manifesto; Wu Han, historian and former deputy mayor of Beijing; Zhu Zhixi, the meritorious engineer in harnessing the Yellow River, and Zongze, a well-known general from the Song Dynasty who resisted aggression by the State of Jin.

Geography

        Yiwu is located 100 km south of the city of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province. The nearest city to Yiwu is Dongyang. The area, as in most of the Province of Zhejiang, is in a mountainous region.

Administration

        Yiwu is technically part of the greater Municipal region of Jinhua, although it has a distinct urban core. It has under its jurisdiction 15 towns and 8 villages, which covers 1102.8 square kilometers, 15 square kilometers of which are urban area of 650,000 people (2005 estimate).

Economy
       Yiwu is famous in China as a commodities center. People from all over the world come to Yiwu City to buy commodities for resale in other parts of China or abroad. Yiwu's China Small-Commodity Market has for 6 consecutive years topped China's 100 top open markets and was for successive years listed as China's civilized open market. It has been named as the banner of China's market economy and with a large variety of quality but cheaper commodities, the market has become a shopping paradise for tourists.