Santa with a saxophone amid plastic pine trees

Christmas is more than three month away but Yiwu is already dressed up for it.

A visit to the International Trade Mart shows a floor in the "festival art" section full of lifesize stuffed toys of Santa in glasses playing the saxophone and jostling for shop space against reindeer that look lost inside plastic coniferous forests covered in wooly snow.

Most importers place their orders for Christmas and New Year in the weeks between April and June.