SANTA’S SWEATSHOP
Welcome to China’s ‘Christmas Town’ where 600 factories turn out an astonishing 60 per cent of the world’s tinsel tat – and where ‘elves’ as young as 11 work gruelling shifts... on just 42p an hour
FAKE fir trees, novelty antlers and brightly coloured tinsel are a disposable, but essential, part of the modern British Christmas. But spare a thought for the thousands of migrant labourers from rural China, some as young as 15, who are paid just 42p an hour to make your festive season sparkle.
For them, there will be no Christmas holiday – not even on December 25.
Welcome to ‘Christmas Town’ in China’s Zhejiang province, an anonymous and rather shabby city which produces an astonishing 60 per cent of the world’s seasonal decorations, including £3million worth of tinsel, and everything else from Father Christmas hats to fibre-optic trees.
Yiwu, 200 miles from Shanghai, takes its nickname from its 600 factories that make Christmas toys and decorations for sale around the world, but particularly in Europe and America.
A vast industry in festive goods has blossomed around the town’s gargantuan retail market – the world’s biggest at 826 acres – with a dedicated section of more than 3,000 booths selling shiny, multi-coloured tat at unbeatably low prices, much of it destined for Britain.
They are supplied by dingy factories staffed by a stream of workers who leave their families behind in poverty-racked rural towns and villages to live in dormitories for 50 weeks of the year.
Their gruelling work often stretches from 7am to 9pm and many are paid piecemeal, according to how many artificial Christmas tree branches or metres of tinsel they can produce in a day.
Zhao Yimin, a 15-year-old wearing a sweater with a rabbit embroidered on the front, gathers tinsel into strings of 12 and has her meagre wages automatically added to the pay packet of her mother, who works in the same factory.
They moved to Yiwu from Yunnan province on China’s south-west border with Burma and Tibet, where wages and job opportunities are among the country’s worst.
She surreptitiously studies a school textbook as she works. ‘We came because it was a place where we could have a better life,’ she says. ‘I won’t work here forever.’
Another is Yang Gui Hua, 18, who earns £6 for a 14-hour working day making intricate replica Christmas tree branches.
‘It is hard work but when I get faster at making the branches I will earn more,’ she says. ‘Some women
is 42-year-old Reng Guoan, regarded as the Christmas tree king of Yiwu. Reng is the founder and general manager of the Sinte An factory, which makes one million trees each year for export around the world, some 100,000 of them to Britain.
Reng set up his factory on the outskirts of the city a decade ago and now employs more than 300 migrant workers, who make an extraordinary variety of artificial trees from authentic-looking versions to the sparkling fibre-optic models, which he says are favoured by British customers.
In his factory showroom, Reng points to the gaudiest imitation tree, with the brightest of twinkling colours, with a baffled expression. ‘This is the kind of tree that English people like the most,’ he says. ‘I don’t know why. I suppose English people just like the lights and the sparkle – the brighter the better.
‘They have very different taste to Americans. Americans like their Christmas trees to look as natural as possible.’
In the courtyard of the factory, a worker wearing a face mask and overalls is spray painting trees with fake snow.
Each costs about £10 to produce – £5 of which is labour.
Reng sends five shipping containers of Christmas trees a year to Britain, dealing mostly with a company called Premier, which supplies artificial trees to garden centres and shops around the country. ‘They came to visit us in September 2015 and placed their order for Christmas 2016,’ said Reng. ‘We will be making even more trees for Britain next year than this year.’
Production of the trees is a noisy, labour-intensive process, with spindles producing artificial branch after branch, and chopping machines echoing around a largely empty factory floor.
The factory is busiest from April to September when production for Western markets is at a peak.
Workers sleep four to a dormitory and work from 7am until 9pm every day, six days a week. As wages rise across China, employee retention is one of the biggest issues for factory owners like Reng.
‘Next year we will move to a new factory that’s twice the size and conditions for workers there will be better,’ he says.
‘Workers will all have TVs and internet in their dormitory blocks. We are trying to make them feel happier so they don’t switch jobs so often.’
BACK in the labyrinth of Yiwu’s wholesale market, huddles of foreign buyers meander up and down the long avenues of packed stalls as the first orders for the 2017 season are placed. The buying frenzy will begin in the spring, stall holders tell us.
Businesswoman Wang Shao has watched the popularity of Christmas grow year by year since she started producing novelty Santa hats and Christmas stockings nearly 20 years ago. Today, she exports hundreds of thousands of items a year to Britain and Europe. ‘My family was in the clothes business, but I came here with a friend in the 1990s and saw what a good opportunity there was in making these things,’ she said.
‘I don’t think I even knew what Christmas was back then but I could see whatever it was the market was huge.’
Gesturing to row after row of traders selling similar items, she added: ‘We were one of the first businesses to make this stuff. Now there is so much competition. Everyone is at it.’
The endless demand for novelty reindeer antlers and toy figures of Father Christmas on a parachute must seem bewildering in a country where Christmas is a recently introduced holiday largely reserved for the middle classes.
Wang laughs when asked whether she celebrates Christmas herself. ‘I believe in Chinese gods, not Western gods,’ she says.
‘For us, Christmas is business.’