Merry Christmas, Yiwu

Santa’s workshop is not at the North Pole, but in the Chinese city Yiwu, where Christmas ambience is created on a conveyor belt and the communist past clashes with capitalist dreams.

Although China does not celebrate Christmas, there are 600 Christmas factories in Yiwu. There, millions of baubles, Santa hats, and USB trees are packed and covered with glitter to please the growing market of insatiable need. Domestic guest workers are employed there, who still live spartanly in cramped working-class homes, but whose pay has increased and they can now begin dreaming of a better life. Merry Christmas, Yiwu deftly unfolds the story about dreams and opportunities where the communist history meets the global capitalist market and Christmas as we know it is manufactured for the entire world.

• Annie Karlsson