Xinfadi Market

Xinfadi Market (Chinese: 北京新发地农产品批发市场, Beijing Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market) is a covered wholesale food market in the southern Beijing district of Fengtai. As of 2020, the market provides more than 90% of Beijing's fruits and vegetables according to state media. Seafood and meat are also sold at the market. Vendors distribute produce from Xinfadi to many smaller markets in Beijing. It is nicknamed the "vegetable basket" and "fruit bowl" of the city.

Xinfadi Market opened on May 16, 1988. It has been renovated at least once in its lifetime. In 2017, it covered an area of 112 hectares. It is the largest wholesale food market in Beijing, with three floors above ground and two underground in 2018. It was the largest wholesale food market in Asia, with as of 2020 more than 10,000 workers including 1,500 managers and over 4,000 tenants. According to the official site in 2020, more than 20,000 tons of fruit, 18,000 tons of vegetables, and 1,500 tons of seafood are sold at the market each day. There is a "beef and lamb trading hall", and poultry meat is also sold on the premises.^{[citation needed]} "The Xinfadi Market is more of a one-stop-shop where wholesalers in the city would purchase vegetables, meat and seafood hall after hall."^{[citation needed]}

The market was responsible in 2016 for 70% of Beijing's fresh vegetables, more than 80% of Beijing's fresh food and drinks, and all of the city's imported fruit. Every year, 14 million tons of products are sold at the market for an estimated 50 billion RMB.

In the last years of the 20th century, Beijing was home to four major food markets: Xinfadi, Yuegezhuang Market (1986), Dazhongsi Market (1986) and Sidaokou Market. Tongxian County latterly set up a market as part of a "new national network of Central wholesale markets", after the 1985 liberalization of trade.

Xinfadi Village, where the market is located, was originally named "Xinfendi" (simplified Chinese: 新坟地; traditional Chinese: 新墳地; pinyin: Xīnféndì, literally "new grave land"), because in 1958 a graveyard located there was leveled to create farmland. The area gradually turned into a settlement, and the name was changed to "Xinfadi" (roughly "newly developed land"). The village mainly contains sandy, loamy, brown soil, suitable for planting vegetables.

On May 10, 1985, the Beijing Bureau of Commodity Prices decided to relax control of the prices of seven key agricultural products: pork, beef, mutton, eggs, poultry, marine fish, and vegetables. On May 30, the municipal Party committee and city government convened a vegetable work conference and decided to "revitalize buying and selling" and "allow food from other parts of the country to come into Beijing". As a result, after farmers from near Xinfadi Village handed over the required quantity of vegetables to the government, they began to set up roadside stands to sell the remainder. These stands gradually turned into a street market.

Over time, many farmers from outside Beijing joined the street market, resulting in disorganized commerce and traffic jams. Local officials repeatedly tried to drive them out, without success, so a member of the Fengtai District Bureau of Industry and Commerce recommended that a wholesale market be established in the village, welcoming the farmers instead of trying to remove them. Xinfadi Village Vegetable Company manager Zhang Yuxi (Chinese: 张玉玺; pinyin: Zhāng Yùxǐ) decided to build a market. On May 16, 1988, 15 villagers, led by Zhang, used wire netting to enclose one hectare in Xinfadi Village. They used 150,000 yuan of funding (50,000 each from the district, township, and village) to establish a farmers' market. In the early days of the market, Zhang, who lacked experience setting up a marketplace, personally sold vegetables in Jining, Zhangjiakou, Luohe, and other places.

By 1989, the area used by Xinfadi Market grew to 1.7 hectares; in 1992, it grew to nearly 7 ha; and in 1999, it grew to close to 70 ha. During this continual growth, Xinfadi Market used low fees and simple procedures to attract customers, and on holidays they did not charge administrative fees. The number of transactions gradually grew, and in 1996 the market's vegetable sales exceeded 1.1 billion kilograms, representing 40% of vegetable sales in Beijing. The market's scope also expanded to include eight categories: vegetables, fruits, grains, oil, meat, seafood, eggs, and condiments. In 2003 the market accounted for 60% of Beijing's vegetable trade. In 2003, Xinfadi Village established 19 residential buildings, dubbed "Xinfadi Executive Paradise" (Chinese: 新发地经营者乐园), to provide housing for managers at Xinfadi Market who were from other places. In 2004, non-market businesses started to move in.