Ussurisk has the most established Chinese market in Primorye, though others are following suit. There are mazes of stalls, and wholesale warehouses offering goods from Harbin, Suifenhe, Mudangjiang and other cities. The shops are endlessly repetitive, selling wallpaper, fabric bouquets, calculators, sweaters, sauce pans, TVs, pastel golf caps emblazoned with the Chicago Bulls emblem, bath towels decorated with naked women. The market bustles for at least 16 hours a day. While it might seem hard to draw enough night-owl customers to keep a market open after dark, Ussuri Center s night market is popular with Ussurisk residents.
Traders drop their prices to wholesale levels at night.
During the day, exhausted merchants often nod off at their trading booths. The Chinese who work in the market seldom leave the compound, which is surrounded by concrete walls and heavily staffed by security guards. Hundreds of men and women live in cargo containers, rail cars, and a so-called hotel complex. On the ground floor, the hotel is a line of stalls, each the size of a cargo container, with roll-up steel doors. There is barely enough space for a sleeping platform and a counter where residents plug in their woks.