You land in Yiwu on a Monday with four days and three categories to buy. By Thursday night you want signed orders, samples in your suitcase, and a clear picture of what ships when. Some buyers leave with all three orders signed. Others walk the same halls for the same four days and go home with photos.
This page is for the second group: it covers how many days your order really needs, how many stalls you can see in a day, how to place a trial order at the counter, and why most buyers skip the factory. It is part of our China sourcing series. If the flight is not booked yet, start with how to travel to China and Yiwu.
How many days does your order need?
The order sets the number of days. Count the categories and the quantity first, then book the flight.
When a buyer asks us how long to stay, we ask two things back: how many categories, and how much of each. Those two answers decide the trip far better than any sample itinerary.
We keep no standard itinerary, because two buyers with the same holiday can have very different amounts of work. More categories take more days, and a category you compare stall by stall takes longer than one you already know.
Here is how the length moves with the order, in our experience:
One category, small trial order: two or three days. You work one district, compare ten to twenty stalls, place a trial order (a small first order that tests the goods and the supplier) and leave with samples. If you know what you are buying before you land, two working days cover it.
Three to five categories: four or five days. A day per category, then the last day to sit down with the quote sheets, fix the packing details and sign.
Many categories, comparing stall by stall: a week or more. Eight or ten categories, or several specs inside each category, is a week of walking. Add a day for every category you add late.
A buyer with one category and a small trial order does not need a week in Yiwu. A buyer shipping a container across eight categories needs far more than a few days. There is no standard number of days; there is only your order: count the categories, count the quantity, and the length of the trip follows.
How many stalls can you see in one day?
Ten to twenty, when you arrive with a list and stay inside one district.
Six to eight stalls a day is the speed of a buyer with no list, in our experience, and ten to twenty is a normal working day for a buyer who knows what he wants. Two things make the difference.
Work one district at a time. The five districts of the market run about 2.5 km end to end, and walking from District 1 to District 5 takes 35–50 minutes. Crossing the market twice in one day costs you an hour of stalls.
Collect first, sit down second. The first pass is five to ten minutes per stall: the model, the minimum order quantity (MOQ), the lead time, the quote sheet, a sample. The second pass, after lunch, is for the three or four stalls worth a proper conversation.
Seeing a stall means comparing the model against your spec, asking for the MOQ, asking when it ships, taking the quote sheet and asking for a sample. Thirty minutes of tea at every counter is how a day ends at five stalls.
Days that end at five or six stalls:
- No list, so you stop at every window and start over at each one.
- One district in the morning, a different one after lunch.
- Sitting down at every stall for the full sales pitch.
- Waiting at a stall for a price it promised to send later.
What do you do when a stall has the right product?
Write the order at the counter, take the sample with you, and confirm the details once you are home.
Write the order there. Write the model number, the quantity, the unit price and the currency. Add the packing: inner box, outer carton, carton marks. Add the delivery date the factory gives you. Add the payment terms. On our own orders we work on 100% T/T in advance (bank transfer before production), and we put that on the order instead of leaving it in the chat. The purchase contract page covers the rest of the wording.
Take the sample the same day. If the sample is on the shelf, it goes in your bag. If the stall has to make it, agree three things before you leave: who pays the courier, which day it leaves, and which address it goes to. A hotel that receives parcels saves you a second trip to the market. How to request and evaluate samples covers what to check when the box arrives.
Confirm from home. Check the sample against your spec, check the packing against what your customer asked for, and run the landed cost again with the real freight number. In our experience a week is a workable window for that check.
Put an expiry date on every quote you accept. A quote is a price on a day, not a price forever. If your confirmation runs past the date on the order, ask the stall to re-confirm the price before production starts.
Why we push buyers to decide at the counter rather than think it over at home: a stall sees dozens of buyers a day and will not remember your face next week, in our experience. Prices move with material cost and the exchange rate. A quote you leave on the table on Monday is not always there on Friday.
This is not a reason to sign blind: the order carries a date and a spec, the sample is in your bag, and the packing details are confirmed by email from home before production starts.
Should you visit the factory?
For most buyers, no. The factory sits off the path between the market and the airport.
Your order starts in the market, where the stall holds the price, the sample and the export paperwork, and the goods move through a warehouse in Yiwu. A factory visit adds a day and shows you a line that is already running.
Whether the order is worth a factory trip is your call, not ours. Here is the arithmetic to make it with: one factory day costs two days of travel and a hotel night, plus the orders you did not write that day. Set that cost against what you expect to save. If the saving is bigger, go. If it is not, the stall already has the answer.
Go when the order needs something the stall cannot answer. A new mould, a change on the line, a custom spec that needs a drawing, a certificate your customer wants to see with his own eyes, or a first order large enough that you want to meet the owner.
Know what the day costs. One factory trip is a car, a plant tour, a meeting and the drive back. Yongkang to Ningbo is a three-hour drive. A day covers one or two factories, and that day is gone — it is the day you would have spent signing orders.
If a factory is already on the itinerary, the distance orders the schedule. Look at where the factory is before you look at the calendar. China is not a country you cross in two or three days, and a single province here can be larger than a European country. Yiwu sits in Zhejiang, and the factories that work with the market are mostly in the same province or the next one: Jinhua, Yongkang, Pujiang, Zhuji, Ningbo, Taizhou. Guangdong — Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan, Zhongshan — is a full day of train away: about 8 hours 34 minutes from Guangzhou South to Yiwu on the one direct train a day. Shandong, Hebei and Sichuan are further still.
Never put two distant factories in one day, and never chain two provinces in one trip. A day with one factory in Zhejiang and one in Guangdong is two days on the road and no proper look at either line. Take the pair that looks cheapest on paper: one factory in Guangzhou, one in Shandong. Guangzhou South to Yiwu is about 8 hours 34 minutes by train, and Shandong is a day or more from Yiwu. Add the fares, a hotel night and two or three days of your time, and on a small order the travel costs more than the order earns. Estimate the profit first, then the travel; if the travel is bigger, do not go. A large order carries that trip, which is why the trip belongs on the orders that can pay for it.
Look for factories by industrial belt, not one by one on a map. The same belt makes the same class of product: the suppliers know each other, the quotes compare directly, and one trip covers several plants. Factories dotted across the map spend your days on the road.
Then order the route. Factories in the same province go on the same day or on two days side by side. If you must cross two provinces, join them with one high-speed train leg and do not double back. Book the far factory first, because a factory date is harder to move than a market day, and let the near ones move around it. In our experience, if two factories are more than half a day of driving apart, they do not belong on the same day.
If a factory needs to be looked at and you cannot spare the day, we can go and send you our own check record, which is the record we keep on every order we handle.
The order of work stays the same: market first, orders signed, and the factory after the order exists, or on your next trip when there is a reason to go.
Why finish the orders in Yiwu and confirm at home?
The price, the sample and the supplier are all in Yiwu, and confirmation is desk work you can do anywhere.
The orders are the point of the trip. You leave with quote sheets, samples and signed orders. How many days that takes depends on what you are buying: one category closes in two days, eight categories with several specs each can take a week. What is left is checking, and checking needs your customer, your budget and your own eyes on the sample, not another hall.
From home you confirm the sample against your spec, the packing against your customer's request, and the budget against the real freight quote. Then the work passes to us: chasing the production date with the factory, checking the goods before they leave, putting cartons from six stalls into one container, and booking the space.
So the last day of the trip is for closing: sort out the shipping, count the cartons, collect the last samples, pay the deposits, and keep one afternoon free for the stall that did not have the sample ready.
Which city do you fly into?
The one that matches your first working day, not the cheapest fare.
Travel times, as ranges from our own trips:
- Yiwu to Hangzhou East: about 30–50 minutes by high-speed train.
- Yiwu to Shanghai Hongqiao: about 1.5–2.5 hours by high-speed train.
- Yiwu to Guangzhou South: about 8 hours 34 minutes, with one direct train a day.
- Yiwu airport: domestic routes. For most international flights you connect through Shanghai, Hangzhou or Guangzhou.
- From Yiwu airport to the market: 15–20 minutes by taxi. From Yiwu station: 20–30 minutes.
Put Yiwu in the middle or at the end of the trip, and do not squeeze it between two short city stops. Squeezing Shanghai, Yiwu and Guangzhou into one trip leaves you three travel days and two working days, and two working days does not cover three categories.
Check times and fares on the official railway site (12306) and on the airport websites; we do not print timetables here, because they change every season.
Where do buying trips go wrong?
Four places, and all four are calendar mistakes rather than travel mistakes.
- The market in the afternoon. Halls open around 08:30 and stalls start packing up between 17:00 and 17:30 in our experience, so a 2 pm start gives you two useful hours. Market in the morning, paperwork in the afternoon.
- Sunday. Many stalls are closed or half-staffed on Sunday in our experience, and some blocks close altogether. Use Sunday for travel, a factory or rest, and do not fly in on Saturday night and count Sunday as a market day.
- Two distant factories in one day. Yongkang to Ningbo is a three-hour drive. Two factories in two cities is a day with two tired conversations and no proper look at either line. Two provinces in one trip is the same mistake with more luggage.
- No list. Three days of walking without a list ends with a bag of catalogues, no order, and the same trip booked again next season.
Two smaller ones: a factory appointment booked without confirming who will be there, and a Monday morning meeting after a Sunday flight.
What should you prepare before you fly?
Book the flight, the first two nights and the intercity train; everything else can move.
- Flight. Book the arrival city that matches your first working day, then compare fares.
- First two nights. Book the hotel in the city you land in, then adjust once the itinerary is real.
- Factory appointment, only if you are going. A factory visit makes sense when the order is large enough to pay for the two days. Confirm the date, the address in Chinese, the name of the person meeting you, and which line you will see. A week ahead is the minimum.
- Train between cities. Book 3–7 days ahead for a normal week, earlier around public holidays. Check 12306 for the real timetable.
- Sample courier. Ask each stall whether it can courier a sample to your hotel. That saves a return trip to the market.
- Cash and cards. Carry some RMB cash, and check that your card works before you rely on it.
Write the agreed terms into the purchase contract before you leave, and keep the last afternoon empty, because something always needs one more visit.
Do-this checklist
- Count your categories and your quantity first, then book the flight. The days follow the order.
- Plan one district per day, and one category per district where you can.
- Plan ten to twenty stalls a day, and keep the second pass for the afternoon.
- Write the model number, quantity, price, packing, delivery date and payment terms on the order at the counter.
- Take the sample the same day, or fix the courier, the date and the address before you leave the stall.
- Put an expiry date on every quote you accept.
- Skip the factory unless the order is large enough to pay for two days, and if you go, keep the factories in one industrial belt and never two of them on one day.
- Keep Sunday as a travel, factory or rest day.
- Put the market in the morning, every day. 17:00 comes early.
- Book the first two nights and the intercity train before you fly.
- Keep the last afternoon for closing: shipping, carton count, last samples.
Related reading
- How to travel to China and Yiwu
- How to request and evaluate samples
- How to negotiate prices with Chinese suppliers
- Purchase contract with a Chinese supplier
Related products
Sources
- Chinagoods (Yiwu China Commodity City official platform) — 行业百科 | 义乌市场采购指南：从行前规划到高效拿货 — https://news.chinagoods.com/information/21/20261023168400 — checked 2026-10-28. "义乌市场采购指南：从行前规划到高效拿货" (the official platform's buying guide covers trip planning and efficient purchasing in the market).
- China Railway 12306 — official timetable and fare query — https://www.12306.cn/ — checked 2026-10-28. "Official schedule and fare source for every intercity leg above."
- YIWU RUIHA TRADING CO.,LTD. — first-hand trip planning with buyers, confirmed with staff — checked 2026-10-28. "Day counts and stall counts above are ranges from buyer trips we have run; the delivery date on an order is the factory's date, and we do not promise a date of our own."
For a quote or to source your products, contact our Yiwu sourcing team → Request a quote