Where Is Yiwu, China? Location, Nearest Airport, Port and Cities for Buyers

Yiwu is a county-level city in central Zhejiang province, in eastern China. It is administered by the larger city of Jinhua, so an official address reads Yiwu, Jinhua, Zhejiang. Measured in a straight line, it sits about 110 km south of Hangzhou, the provincial capital, and about 250 km south-west of Shanghai. Its nearest airport is Yiwu Airport, about 6 km from the city centre, and its nearest seaport is Ningbo-Zhoushan, less than 200 km to the east.

Most people who look up where Yiwu is are planning to visit its wholesale market or to buy goods that will be shipped from it. For both, the geography matters more than it first appears: it decides where you fly into, how long the trip takes and which port your quotation is priced to. This guide answers the common location questions and then explains what they mean for a buyer of pet supplies. The market itself, how it is laid out and how buying there works, is covered in our guide to the Yiwu market for pet supply buyers.

Which city is Yiwu in?

Yiwu is a city in its own right. China has several levels of city, and Yiwu is a county-level city inside the prefecture-level city of Jinhua. In practice that means two things for a visitor. Yiwu has its own railway station, its own airport and its own city government, so you travel to Yiwu, not to Jinhua. And Jinhua, the prefecture seat, is a separate city about 50 km to the west. If a supplier's address says only Jinhua, the workshop may be in Yiwu, in Jinhua itself or in one of the other towns of the prefecture, so ask which before you plan a visit around it.

The city grew around its market. What began as a street market in 1982 is now the International Trade City, a set of large multi-storey districts, and much of the rest of the city serves it: warehouses, freight forwarders, export agents, hotels and the restaurants of traders who come from all over the world.

Which cities are closest to Yiwu?

The table gives rounded straight-line distances from central Yiwu and the way most visitors make the trip. Road distances are longer, and train times vary from one service to the next, so check a current timetable before you book.

City	What it is	Approximate straight-line distance	Usual way to get there
Dongyang	Neighbouring city to the east	16 km	A short drive
Jinhua	The prefecture seat that administers Yiwu	50 km	Road or train
Hangzhou	Provincial capital, with the nearest large international airport	110 km	High-speed train, under an hour
Ningbo	Port city, home of the nearest container port	155 km	Train, about an hour and a half
Shanghai	The largest city in the region, with the most long-haul flights	250 km	High-speed train from Hongqiao, from about an hour and a half
Guangzhou and Shenzhen	The southern manufacturing region and the Canton Fair	960 km	Flight
Beijing	The national capital	1,200 km	Flight, or a high-speed train of about 7 hours

Is Yiwu close to Beijing?

No. Beijing is about 1,200 km north of Yiwu in a straight line, almost five times as far as Shanghai. The fastest direct high-speed trains from Beijing South take about 7 hours, and many services take longer. A direct flight to Yiwu Airport takes about 2 hours, so if your trip starts in Beijing, fly.

Beijing is a reasonable stop for meetings, but it is not a base for sourcing in Yiwu. Most of the workshops that supply the market are in Zhejiang, and the factory visits that usually follow a market visit are a short drive or train ride from Yiwu, not from the capital.

Which airport is closest to Yiwu?

Yiwu Airport is the closest, about 6 km from the city centre. It mostly serves domestic routes, so for an overseas buyer it is usually the last leg of a trip rather than the first. International arrivals normally come through one of two larger airports and continue by road or rail.

Airport	Code	Approximate distance from Yiwu	Best for
Yiwu Airport	YIW	6 km	Domestic connections from other Chinese cities
Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport	HGH	110 km	The nearest large international airport, about an hour and a half by road
Shanghai Pudong International Airport	PVG	260 km	The widest choice of long-haul flights, then a train from Shanghai Hongqiao station

Pudong airport and Hongqiao station are on opposite sides of Shanghai, so allow time for the transfer. If you land at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport instead, the railway station is next to the terminal. A common plan for a first visit is to fly into Shanghai or Hangzhou, take a high-speed train to Yiwu station, spend two or three days in the market and then visit factories elsewhere in Zhejiang.

What is the closest port to Yiwu?

Yiwu is inland and has no seaport. The closest container port is Ningbo-Zhoushan, less than 200 km to the east. It is one of the busiest container ports in the world and the usual port of shipment for goods bought in Yiwu. The port of Shanghai is the main alternative, further away, and is used when a sailing or a freight rate from Shanghai suits the destination better.

Goods reach the port in one of two ways:

• By truck. A container is loaded at a warehouse in Yiwu and driven to the terminal. This is the most common route, and the one a supplier usually has in mind when it quotes a price at the port.
• By sea-rail train. Containers go from Yiwu's rail freight yard to Ningbo-Zhoushan by train and are loaded onto the ship there. Services run several times a week.

Yiwu also has its own customs office and an inland port, so a container can be declared for export and sealed in Yiwu and then moved to the coast, rather than being cleared at the port. And there is a route that skips the sea altogether: freight trains have run from Yiwu to Europe and Central Asia since 2014. Some European buyers use them when a delivery date matters more than the freight rate. For most pet supplies, which are often bulky for their value and sensitive to freight cost, sea freight through Ningbo-Zhoushan is still the default.

What the port means for your quotation

Because Yiwu is inland, a price quoted FOB Yiwu does not quite make sense. Under the Incoterms rules, FOB means the seller delivers the goods on board the ship at a named port of shipment, and it is meant for sea and inland waterway transport. A supplier who writes FOB Yiwu usually means FOB Ningbo, or sometimes a price at their own warehouse door, and the difference between the two is the trucking, the export declaration and the terminal charges in between. Ask which it is.

Term as quoted	Where the seller's delivery ends	Who pays from Yiwu to the port	Who handles export clearance
EXW Yiwu	At the seller's premises in Yiwu, not loaded	You	You, which is hard without an exporter in China acting for you
FCA Yiwu	Handed to your forwarder or carrier in Yiwu	You	The seller
FOB Ningbo	Loaded on board the ship at Ningbo-Zhoushan	The seller	The seller
CIF to your port	On board at Ningbo-Zhoushan, with sea freight and insurance to your port paid by the seller	The seller	The seller
DDP to your address	At your named address, with import duties paid	The seller	The seller

None of these terms is wrong in itself. What matters is that the quotation names the term, the place and the Incoterms edition, for example FOB Ningbo, Incoterms 2020, so that two quotes can be compared on the same basis. A low FCA Yiwu price and a higher FOB Ningbo price can cost the same once the inland leg is added. Before you compare, ask each supplier:

• Which port, or which place in Yiwu, is the price to?
• Does the price include the export declaration and the inland transport?
• If the order comes from several stalls or workshops, who consolidates it into one shipment, and who checks the cartons?
• Whose name will appear as the exporter on the export declaration?

The import side, duty and clearance in your own country, works the same whichever port the goods leave from. It is covered in importing pet supplies from China to the USA and importing pet supplies from China to Europe.

Planning a trip to Yiwu

• Fly to the region, then take the train. Shanghai and Hangzhou have the international flights, and the high-speed trains to Yiwu station are frequent and usually quicker than driving.
• Stay close to the market. The International Trade City is large, and the halls are easier to work through when your hotel is near enough to drop off samples and go back.
• Combine the market with factories. Many of the workshops behind the stalls are elsewhere in Zhejiang. Visiting the one that makes your product tells you more than the stall can.
• Avoid Chinese New Year. The market closes for several weeks around the holiday, and so do the factories behind it.
• Treat the south as a separate leg. Guangzhou, Shenzhen and the Canton Fair are about 960 km away. A flight between the two regions is a normal part of a sourcing trip; a drive is not.

Where AXISLINK fits

AXISLINK TRADING LIMITED is a Hong Kong trading company with affiliated entities in Yiwu and Shenzhen, so the geography above is the ground we work on. If you want pet supplies of the kind sold in Yiwu without managing the inland leg yourself, we quote at export terms: one quotation with the Incoterm, the port, the MOQ and the lead time stated, a sign-off sample held on both sides, inspection before the balance is paid, and one counterparty for a mixed order across toys, walking gear, beds and cat trees, grooming and carriers.

The product range lists what we already carry, with minimum order quantities on each page, and the rest of this pillar is indexed under sourcing pet supplies from China. To get a price, send the item, the quantity and your destination port and request a quote from the contact page, or email sales@axislinktrading.com.