When the market was opened in November 1982, it merely consisted of a few hundred sheds and stalls, but proved highly popular and grew quickly. In 1983, the county government spent 580,000 yuan (US$293,567) to build a new market consisting of booths. By the end of that year, there were more than 1,000 vendors selling over 3,000 products, most of them from outside of Yiwu.
