In Chendai, the name Ding rings a bell

By any standard, Chendai may be the most peculiar town in China.

The obscure small town hosts the largest number of Chinese sportswear brands - Anta, Xtep, 361, Deerway and Hongxing Erke. Surprisingly most of the brands are owned by men surnamed Ding.

"The Ding people control nearly 50 percent of the Chinese sportswear market," said Ding Shuibo, president of Xtep (China) Co Ltd.

In fact they are descendants of Arabian traders who flourished in the Quanzhou area more than 1,000 years ago. Quanzhou is situated on the southeastern coast of Fujian province and was an important harbor and starting point of the Maritime Silk Road in the Song and Yuan dynasties. The largest and most influential clan is Ding and more than 20,000 of them live in Chendai, which has a total population of about 80,000.

The second peculiarity of the 38.8-sq-km town is the large number of luxury cars. At first sight the town looks no different from others: drab buildings from the 1980s, small mom-and-pop restaurants and stores, and karaoke shops. But BMWs, Porsches and Mercedes-Benz cars are whizzing one after another on the winding and narrow streets along with tractors and tricycles.

Advertising billboards featuring famous and not so famous sports stars and pop music and TV stars are visible everywhere, from greenbelts along the streets to the top of factories and department store buildings.

The small town has more than 3,000 shoe manufacturers and produces 40 percent of China's sports shoes. It is said that for every five pairs of sports shoes in the world, two are produced here.

Chendai has a complete chain of shoe manufacturing business so that one can get all the materials and equipment for producing a pair of shoes without walking out of the town. The annual turnover of shoe materials and equipment in the town has exceeded 20 billion yuan.

(China Daily 06/01/2009 page12)