source: http://blog.yoyoor.com/



The Canton Fair (China Export Commodities Fair) begins in a matter of days. As China’s largest trade fair, hopefully you will not be traveling in Guangzhou during the fair, unless you plan on attending on business. That said, if you do find yourself in Guangzhou, it would surely be an interesting place to visit for a day or two.

What makes the Canton Fair China’s largest trade fair? It’s a difficult qualifier to measure, since the fair is mainly a place to make contacts for future business and not actually to buy and sell products. Personally, I think the best way to measure how successful the Canton Fair is would be to calculate how many business cards changed hands. I could not find that statistic, but here are some interesting facts and numbers to get you in the trade show mood:

--First session: April 1957 (October 2008 is the 104th session)
--Exhibition space: 630,000 square meters
--Number of standard booths: 41,000 (April 2008 session)
--Product varieties (Spring 2008): 150,000
--Product varieties (Spring 1957): 12,000
--Business turnover: US$382.3 million (April 2008 session)
--Exhibitors: 15,000+ (April 2008 session)
--Visitors: 206,749 (April 2007 session)
--Countries represented: 203 (April 2008 session)
--Most commonly spoken languages: Chinese, English, Arabic, Spanish, Russian



I have never been to the fair, but did get to visit Guangzhou in 2004. My main memory is all the taxi drivers would not use the memory so I took a motorbike taxi across town, going down exit ramps against traffic onto a highway. A lot has changed since then but be prepared for traffic, crowds and expensive hotel rates. If you want to stay in a nice part of Guangzhou, the area around Shamian Island is probably the best.

Once at the fair, most of the staff at booth will be sales representatives from factories who have a decent command of English. If not, there will be Chinese university students at the gates to the fair offering interpretation services (be careful who you choose and trust here). Yoyoor subscribers can take advantage of the Call Center in the event of tough translation issues and to help with any other questions.

Remember to count how many business cards you received (and kept), the fair is a great place to make new business contacts in China.

hello all,
Yes, this is supposed to be an awesome fair---I hope to attend this year.

I hope to go to China soon for business and with any luck it will be close to the time of the next fair. Any tips that you have to make it more enjoyable would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

best places to stay in China.... canton fair hotel