Yiwu, the world's largest small commodity distribution center, brings together foreign trade merchants from all over the world, nearly a thousand of whom are from Afghanistan. Chinese director Shen Di filmed the short film "Cycle of Night", featuring Qasem Shah, an Afghan who has been in China for 20 years, which won the Special Mention Award in the Chinese Language Competition at the 2021 Beijing International Short Film Exhibition (BISFF). We found ShenDi, who enthusiastically took our reporter on a trip to Yiwu to smoke shisha in an Afghan café and chat with the Afghans who came and went.
— Editor's Note
"Buy Global, Sell Global"
It's a place to make money.
Yiwu, the world's largest small commodity distribution center, "buy global, sell global", is its city poster. Director Shen Di first came here, in the street market, she saw is day and night, bustling, the world's foreign trade merchants, are for profit, are all for the benefit of the future.
Here, the flow of goods, opportunities, and money is unimaginably fast. But what interests her most is the stories of foreigners who live in Yiwu. After wandering around a few times, Shen Di decided to move in for half a year, and in the gap between her lives, she made a short film, "Cycle of Night", based on a group of Afghan friends in Yiwu. The short film won the Special Mention Award in the Chinese Language Competition at the 2021 Beijing International Short Film Association (BISFF).
The night in The Schendi film. © "Cycle of the Night"
In those six months, Shen Di got along as closely as a friend, playing billiards together every day, going to their house to cook during the Spring Festival, mixing together day after day, "completely based on the understanding of daily life" growing up little by little, and she knew a lot of small things that everyone messed up.
In this film, it also incorporates many stories that Afghan friends have told Shendi. There is a story from Latif, whose brother wanted to emigrate to Europe a decade ago, who spoke only Hindi after being born in India, who sent his children and his wife to a ship bound for Germany, exiled himself in various countries, "sometimes on the ship, sometimes in the desert", and many years later he was finally reunited with his family in Germany.
Do business in the trade city
Qasem Shah is probably the oldest Afghan foreign trade merchant in Yiwu. According to statistics, there are about 500 foreign trade companies registered by Afghans in Yiwu, and according to the estimation of 2-3 Afghans with work visas per family, there are about 1,000 Afghans in Yiwu, mainly engaged in importing trade to Afghanistan.
Qasem Shah is introducing himself on how to learn English. © "Cycle of the Night"
QasemShah first came to Yiwu in 2002, and 20 years flew by. 20 years ago, Qasem Shah was in the electric light business in Mazari, with supplies from Turkey and Iran. Later, a friend introduced him to the light bulbs produced in Yiwu. He still remembers the complicated route when he first came to China, landing in Urumqi, passing through Gansu, flying to Shanghai, entering Hangzhou, and the crooked road led him to Yiwu.
At that time, Yiwu's small commodity trading market was far from today's scale. In the past few decades, the small commodity market has developed from a road market and a simple trellis market to a professional street and a professional market, and when QasemShah came, the international trade city that is now familiar with the city was established and started.
Yiwu night snare game. © "Cycle of the Night"
The Yiwu merchants who heard the news brought the various sample goods of light bulbs made by the factory to the hotel and swung them open for foreign businessmen like him to choose. Even Chinese did not understand the language of Persian, and the early business did so.
Since then, Qasem Shah has become a foreign trade purchaser like a migratory bird, and every year he has to stay in Yiwu for the first half of the year, purchasing the goods needed for his hardware and home appliance shop, packing and shipping, and returning to Afghanistan for two or three months to take care of the family business. QasemShah, who has stayed for many years, has witnessed the history of Yiwu's foreign trade development, and over the years, the commercial market has undergone many expansions. Every day at noon, he will patrol the 4.7 million square meters of business district to select "business opportunities" goods.
Jady came to China for five years, his life was "different every day", and he had become a skilled foreign trader. After receiving the commission, he will run to the factory to see the goods, place an order to personally stare at the packing and logistics, and call the factory or customer to negotiate the price. Over the years, he has had clients in Arabia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and even South Asia and Africa.
Behind the demand of buyers is factories all over the country. Jady will go to the Jiangsu factory to see the electronic equipment, stare at the solid wood furniture cabinets in Foshan, and every façade of the trade city will affect the supply chain of Chinese manufacturing. The flow of global capital is between buying and selling, and Yiwu participates in this way.
After entering the industry, Jiedi even took a Chinese driver's license, and since then he can drive to factories around the world to see the goods, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Zhejiang Ningbo, Wenzhou have the factories he has run all over.
Jady.
Jadey's growth rate is so fast that it is difficult to imagine that Jadey, who first arrived in China five years ago, could not speak a word of Chinese. Only because his uncle who came to his house promised him that he could get a work visa in China. "I'm going to take you to China, and you're going to work with me, okay?" Jadey gladly agreed, leaving the business university where she had only been studying for a year and entering her uncle's friend's restaurant to work.
He went to work in his uncle's foreign trade company for a monthly salary of 2,000, but the boss forbade him to contact and contact customers through personal relations, and was only willing to give him trivial assistant work.
A single channel of communication added some danger to his Chinese life, and when his offer for a salary increase was rejected, he resigned when his boss threatened to cancel his work visa, citing "a lot of money spent on bringing me to China at that time." But with two years left on his visa, Jadey didn't want to return home, and with the help of friends, he hung up his visa with another company.
Night view of Yiwu.
The subsequent outbreak of the epidemic changed his life, merchants from all over the world could not come, and many orders were transferred to online platforms. Leaving the company's Jadey finally ushered in the moment when foreign trade orders poured in, for many foreign to find Chinese masks, Pinduoduo, 1688, a variety of can find factory-produced cheap masks, he can be shipped. When the customers increased one by one, he pulled out a WeChat group full of customers and threw the bargains he found into it every day. Many times, those small goods come from the tail goods of the factory.
Jedi and his friends.
“Cheap，cheaper！” This is the first demand of many foreign investors. Jeddy's foreign trade strategy has stabilized, "they want to be cheap", one end to contact the factory, take over the clearance tail goods in the Chinese factory, and the other end to foreign customers from the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, they need more cheap products.
Doing foreign trade requires flexible and changeable communication, and Shendi has seen the speed of this "active network". During a brief stint at an Iraqi foreign trade company, she accompanied a foreign customer to a shoe sole processing plant, where the customer offered to contact the factory that produced the shoe sole mold. The director would immediately start calling, and the three parties, who had not known each other, in two hours in one afternoon, quickly set up the line from scratch, drank tea at a table, and reached a long-term cooperation.
Eat and drink outside the city
The gathering of foreign trade for several years has changed the folk customs of Yiwu as a county city. Muslims from the Middle East, Yunnan and other places have formed a fixed settlement around the commercial city, and the hometown of merchants from different countries has been integrated, and the unique and diverse exotic customs have also come from this.
A wall in Yiwu is painted with "I love Yiwu".
During the day, foreign trade merchants from various countries may have cross-cutting work links with each other, and at night, when they have nothing to do, they will rush to the exotic street located in the Binwang business district, the whole street is full of shisha cafes and Turkish restaurants in the Middle East, adjacent to which is zhejiang's largest Sanding Road night market with more than 700 stalls.
The gathering of food and beverage is based on the similarity of language and culture, "Tajikistan and Turkmen people are close, Azerbaijanis are playing with Turkey" Shendi who is in Yiwu has been cleared, and the soul of an Afghan restaurant is from the Afghan owner clerk, attracting Afghan friends who know each other.
Afghan café on Shisha Street.
In the fall of 2019, Yiwu finally arrived with Rohman, an Afghan who could speak both fluent Chinese, English and Persian. He opened an Afghan café on Shisha Street called Yiyun Coffee, with Afghan carpets nailed to the walls and offering shisha and Turkish black tea. Prior to that, Rohman and his brother Latif attended university in Hangzhou for nearly 10 years.
Above: Rohman (left), Uncle Qasem Shah (right), and Jady (center), at the café.
Below: Rohman's younger brother Latif is in charge of a gala as host.
The café became a meeting place for Afghan foreign traders — every night after work, they got together to play cards, watch balls, spit out Persian into the mixed fruity shisha, saw friends shake hands and bump their cheeks, and old-school businessmen, putting their hands to their chests to show respect for their friends. Rohman, the café's owner, was sociable, and throughout the evening he walked around each table in a suit and greeted the guests until the early hours of the morning.
Director Shen Di came here for the first time, and was introduced by a friend in Turkmenistan. The house she rented was just one road away from the café, which has since become her permanent residence, "with a shooting machine coming every day." They thus opened up a network of foreign friends in Afghanistan, and the new friends invited them before saying goodbye that night: "Tomorrow we are going to see football, are you coming?" A group of exotic-faced children happily kicked a soccer ball in Yiwu's soccer stadium, and Shen Di cut them into a short film.
Director Shen Di was invited to watch a ball game. © "Cycle of the Night"
In fact, in Yiwu, there are not many public spaces for Afghan people to communicate. The dismal business affected by the epidemic has reduced the number of Afghans to more than 20 people in Ariana Restaurant, and the Kabu Restaurant, which is famous for its Afghan-style buffets, has also chosen to close.
For many young people, follow their friends to Yiwu to make money, the first place to stay is in the restaurant. The same goes for Jadey, who later breaks in, and Ariana's restaurant allows him to transition to the hardest days. Working in a restaurant, Jeddy made many friends who were also from Afghanistan, and learned Chinese from Chinese clerks in Yunnan.
They are with Afghanistan
In the past two years, because of the epidemic and the domestic changed political situation, Afghanistan has almost become a place that cannot be returned, and there are no direct tickets at all, even if it is difficult to transfer from other countries and grab rare and expensive tickets, the quarantine policy makes it difficult to return to Yiwu.
A large group of Afghan foreign trade merchants stranded in Yiwu. Qasem Shah, who travels to and from migratory birds every year, has not returned home for two years.
QasemShah shows ShenDi the photos in the album. © "Cycle of the Night"
Of the Afghans Shendi knew, Uncle Qasem Shah, 64, was the closest to his hometown. As the pillar of a large family with 35 families, over the years, he has worked hard to earn a four-story mall in his hometown - 12 shops, 3-storey warehouse, a total of 960 square meters of fixed assets, the eldest son takes care of two hardware stores, and the others are rented out to others.
When he returned to Afghanistan, his life was very different from that of Yiwu, changing into a traditional long shirt and hat, and his eight sons and daughters and their grandchildren lived with him. Every morning he meets his friends for tea, and when he leaves work in the afternoon, he takes his grandchildren and goes shopping for ice cream together.
Such a life is coming for a long time, and his mobile phone is full of photos sent by his family, which he looks at from time to time. As Qasem Shah gets older, business visas will not be easy to collect after the age of 65, and his children will grow into families. The second son hopes to one day take over his father's migratory bird life and contact the flow of goods and business between the two places.
For many foreign traders who have left their homeland in Afghanistan, who are alone in foreign lands, far from the traditions of Afghan society, they are also establishing new relationships in new places. In his daily life, Shendi understands that "they are in a more free and safe area, and then this area can make them money, and they make a lot of money", for example, young people are very different from life in Afghanistan, and there is no need to rush to get married.
When he left Afghanistan, Jedi realized that there was no good job opportunity in his hometown, and he wanted to create a piece of his life from the unknown country. Five years have passed, Jadey has survived the threshold of subsistence, the income can gradually support the family, every month, he gives the money he earns to his father, but also the responsibility and nourishment of the distant family.
Jady took QasemShah on the road. © "Cycle of the Night"
Rohman and his brother have been dependent on each other in China for 12 years and are now almost completely cut off from their families. He returned to Afghanistan for two or three days in order to do his business, where there were no traces of his life.
He wants to be able to live the life he wants in China. In the romantic imagination, he could join hands with his Chinese lover, go out of his home, and walk along the lake every day.