Within the sprawling 4-kilometer expanse of “Yiwu International Trade City” located in China, there are over seventy thousand merchants. Day in and day out, they sit within their cramped stalls, peddling Chinese-manufactured small commodity to the world.
 

In an attempt to visualize this vast economic circulation, I sampled five shops within the "Market". Initially, I researched the total volume of goods sold by these shops over the course of a year, juxtaposing it against the area of their "living space." Through my calculations, I discovered that the volume of goods sold by a single shop exceeds the area of its own premises by more than tenfold, with the largest ratio reaching an astounding 1:10000. This staggering data reveals the world they have created.

The aforementioned is the first stage of the project's mapping. In the second stage, I utilized strands of hair from a wholesale wig store I surveyed to outline the skylines of the countries to which these wigs are exported.

The ability of these goods to be sold worldwide hinges upon their low prices and rapid turnover. Behind such large transaction volumes and low prices lies a plethora of invisible, cheap labor. In today's world, economic activities are highly visible, while those with insufficient purchasing power are relegated beyond the confines of our cognitive structures, rendering vast swathes of humanity sociologically invisible.