Small commodities, big infrastructure

The landlocked city of Yiwu in Zhejiang Province, China is considered to be the world’s biggest wholesale market for small commodities where low cost consumer goods such as kitchenware, toys, and electronics are traded in bulk before being retailed in (pound)shops around the world. Linked to the rest of the world through a multimodal transport network, Yiwu lies on the ‘backroads of globalisation’ along which minor, low-grade, low-value products travel (Knowles 2014). Building on work by social scientists who question the entanglement of state power, physical infrastructures, and people, this visual essay uses the theoretical lens of infrastructures as well as the lens of cameras to investigate the interdependence of Yiwu’s wholesale and logistics infrastructure and the individuals who work in them to facilitate the global trade of small commodities.