Jean genies of Yulin

Yulin is "the world's biggest trouser manufacturing city" and cranks out millions of pairs of jeans at less than US$2 apiece.

On a recent visit to the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region city, I made a beeline to Fumian district, which has 360,000 residents, and visited an exhibition hall showcasing two pairs of colossal jeans - so tall that one has to crane one's neck to get a full picture.

At the exhibition hall, a dozen of the 62 apparel brand names were represented. They constitute the bulk of the mind-boggling half a million pairs of trousers, mostly jeans, produced at more than 1,000 plants in Fumian in a single day.