The Chinese city of Yiwu, located south of Shanghai, is known worldwide for its market, where a psychedelic cornucopia of millions of mass produced consumer items are sold en masse for cheap. Photographers like Richard John Seymour have captured the colorful stalls of the giant market, many of which sell just one item, like rubber duckies or plastic flowers, in a kaleidoscope of colors and styles.
A new documentary on the city and its marketplace, Bulkland, investigates the changing dynamics of Yiwu's economy. As China's fortunes change, the prices of the goods found in the city's market are rising, putting some vendors out of work. Director Dan Whelan called Yiwu "a microcosm of a changing China" in an interview on the podcast Sinica. "The government line is to go into high-tech goods, into information technology, into cars," he says. "and leave behind [China] as the 'cheap stuff factory of the world.'" The film is available to stream on YouTube now.
Source: Journeyman VOD via CityLab
