Yiwu mold town ushers in 'Christmas season'

HANGZHOU — As summer heat lingers, Yiwu, the eastern Chinese city known as "the world's supermarket", has already ushered in the "Christmas season".

Shops in the Yiwu International Trade Market are filled with festive surprises — Santa Claus in summer outfits for Southern Hemisphere customers, and street lamps with artificial snowflakes swirling inside their lampshades — all carefully packed and ready to be shipped worldwide.

While Christmas products await their global journey, machines producing the molds of those products are humming at factories in the Yiwu mold town, some 17 kilometers away. Workers are busy rushing to fulfill a continuous stream of orders.