Yiwu's long history flourished as early as the Neolithic Age. Yiwu first became a county in the year 2220 BC and was renamed Yiwu County in the year 624 AD. In May 1988, the former Yiwu County was upgraded to a county-level city. In 1995, Yiwu ranked the 47th among China's 100 most powerful counties/cities regarding comprehensive economic strength and in the same year listed as Zhejiang's sole city among the nation's experimental counties/cities of comprehensive reform.

Yiwu's early culture has given birth to rivers of great figures in the fields of literature, art military, education, and engineering. Among those were Chen Wangdao, China's first translator of Marx's Communist Manifesto; Wu Han, historian and former Beijing's deputy mayor; Zhu Zhixi, the meritorious engineer in harnessing the Yellow River, and Zongze, well-known general in resisting aggression by Jin State in Song Dynasty. Those who have contributed a lot to Yiwu's good reputation of the county of culture.

Provided with subtropical monsoon climate, Yiwu has four clear seasons, relaxing climate, abundant sunshine, with yearly average temperature 17.2¡æ, rainfalls1430.lmm,and humidity76%. As the gold Autumn, October is best time to hold firs with the advantage of monthly average temperature 18.7 ℃, rainfalls 67.7mm, humidity 77%, it is the gold season for trade traveling in the refreshing air, breezing wind and sunshine.

Yiwu also boasts plenty of tourist resources. Its beautiful natural landscapes have fascinated many scholars and poets so much that they wrote poems about the charming spots. The spots include Shuanglinsi Temple, a sacred Buddhist place in Yunhuangshan Mountain; Goshengshan where Prince Gou Jian of the Yue State in ancient times slept on faggots and tasted animal's gall before each meal in order to nurture his vengeance on the conquerors of his country, Yiwu River and Dachen River, deep and wide, Songpushan Roaring Waterfall and other 20 summer resorts of lakes and springs. Yiwu has abundant products. The Three Big Treasures, namely, brown sugar, ham and Nan date, are well-known both at home and abroad; The time-honored local specialties have high production and better quality, to name a few, the skin of soya-bean milk, dried rolls of bean milk cream, Baizi wine and Shanhua pear.

Yiwu city is famous for the trade business. The China Commodity City, originally founded in 1982, owns 27,000 booths with 60000 operators; annals turnovers run as high as RMB 21billion Yuan. Yiwu is standing on the status of the national circulation center of small commodities, the national information center of small commodities, the display center of national small commodities, the national largest export center of small commodities, Yiwu contributed greatly for China commodities, circulation. Furthermore, the city's comprehensive economy strength in 2002 ranks in the national top 20.