Santa’s Christmas Workshop in Yiwu

Santa’s Christmas Workshop look like a sequin-covered slaughterhouse. Santa’s hat and the ornaments you hang on your tree aren’t made somewhere at Arctic Circle by eleves: they are made in sweatshops in the Chinese city of Yiwu, about 300 kilometers from Shanghai. It looks like the artist Anish Kapoor has been let loose with his wax cannon again.

Called “China’s Christmas Village,” Yiwu contains approximately 600 factories that are responsible for over 60% of the world’s felt Santa hats, Christmas stockings, styrofoam snowmen, glitter-covered ornaments, and so on. The “elves” that staff these factories are mainly migrant labourers, working 12 hours a day for a maximum of $300 a month to create those Christmas baubles, tinsel and flashing LED lights you’ve draped liberally around your house these days; – and it turns out they’re not entirely sure what Christmas is.

Read the full report at The Guardian.