Jimingshan residential community in Yiwu was named one of the first provincial-level international cultural exchange bases on Dec 4 during the 2020 “Focus on Zhejiang” International Cultural Exchange Week in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province.
Jimingshan is home to more foreigners than any other community in Yiwu and is often referred to as the “international residential community”. Over 25,000 migrants live there, including more than 1,400 traders from 74 countries and regions.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, the community was recognized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the efforts by both Chinese and foreign residents to combat the epidemic.
Since 2014, the community has been offering Chinese language and culture training to more than 70,000 expats.
Guo Jianling, vice-dean of the School of International Culture and Education at Zhejiang Normal University, teaches Chinese to expats living in Jimingshan residential community on Sept 23.
The students, in return, are helping to coordinate traffic, performing other community services, and mediating business disputes.
Iranian businessman Hamid Dehghani, who has a PhD in psychology and is fluent in six languages, is a well-known mediator in Jimingshan. “I love mediation. I love seeing people who come in anger leave hugging and smiling,” he said.
But Jimingshan is only one small part of Yiwu, a city known as the “world’s supermarket”. On a daily basis, there are around 30,000 foreign buyers in Yiwu, half of whom are staying in hotels and half of whom live in the city as permanent residents.