Bazaar brings southwest produce to Shanghai
A stall owner shows a fresh black bolete from Xishuangbanna at a newly opened bazaar in Xuhui District.
A bazaar featuring products from southwest China opened in downtown Xuhui District on Friday to help its remote mountainous village inhabitants overcome poverty.
As part of Shanghai’s ongoing shopping festival, the market is held in the basement of Magnolia Plaza at 777 Hongqiao Road, with half of its agricultural products coming from poor counties in Yunnan Province.
“It will run through September to boost consumption in the city as COVID-19 wanes, and help farmers in Yunnan who are struggling beneath the poverty line,” said Xue Yuan, president of the Xuhui Federation of Industry and Commerce, which is organizing the event.
Specialties from the Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture are being promoted at stalls and via livestream broadcasts from the bazaar. They include ducks raised on the area's terraced fields, Hani chickens raised by the ethnic minority, as well as mushrooms which are rare in Shanghai.
Fresh black bolete from Xishuangbanna became popular among local buyers on the first day of the market. They were transported by NIUFUREN, a Xuhui-based mushroom brand, to Shanghai.
Customers visit a newly opened bazaar in Xuhui featuring agricultural products from southwest Yunnan Province.
The local company raises 60,000 bottles of boletes in Xishuangbanna per day and has employed 300 local villagers with annual salaries of 50,000 yuan (US$7,050), said Bai Ru, market supervisor of NIUFUREN. If the product proves popular among urban dwellers, the company plans to increase daily production volume to 50 tons and hire a total of 2,800 villagers in poor living condition, she said.
Gong Hao, deputy general manager with Mingyan, which operates many of the city’s wet markets, brings southwest specialties such as red rice and fruits from four poor villages — Shiping, Luxi, Yuanyang and Pingbian — under the jurisdiction of Honghe county to the bazaar.
The Yuanyang terraced fields date back to over 1,000 years and the red rice raised there with adequate sunshine and mountain water is more nutritious, Gong told customers.
Apart from products from Yunnan, many brands such as Dyson, Huawei and Mark Fairwhale are also taking part in the market to sell discounted and discontinued appliances, clothes and electronic devices.
Local customers visit a newly opened bazaar in Xuhui featuring agricultural products from southwest Yunnan Province.
Local customers visit a newly opened bazaar in Xuhui featuring agricultural products from southwest Yunnan Province.
A livestream broadcast is held at the bazaar to promote products from southwest Yunnan Province on the Internet.
