The third phase of the 136th China Import and Export Fair, or the Canton Fair, opened on Thursday in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong, highlighting new designs and quality lifestyle products to attract buyers from around the world.
Covering a total exhibition area of 515,000 square meters, which is about the size of two National Stadiums, or the Bird's Nest, the five-day event, themed on "better life," features 21 exhibition zones across five major sectors: toys and maternity products, fashion, household textiles, stationery, and health and leisure.
A total of 24,507 booths were set up for 11,703 participating enterprises, including 257 foreign companies from 29 countries and regions at the import exhibition. As an "old friend" of the Canton Fair, a Malaysian cookie manufacturer brought more than 100 new packaging styles this time to offer purchasers more options.
"We are mainly looking for distributors and retailers. We only had one style before. Now we have more than 100 styles for various festival scenarios," said Patrick Ku, an exhibitor from Malaysia. A smart plush toy uses a large language model, a type of computational model designed for natural language processing tasks such as language generation, and can freely chat with users in Chinese, English, and French.
"This plush toy can talk to children, learn their preferences and offer them more personalized companionship," said Hu Wei, a designer of a toy and pet supplies exhibitor. Products for health and life have become a new favorite at the Canton Fair for years. A Shenzhen-based exhibitor is crowded with buyers to experience its smart massage devices and home medical devices. "We've come with more than 60 styles of products, including 10 new ones. Many customers came to our booth early in the morning to try our products, leaving behind a lot of contact information, and we also received many business cards, which are from Europe, America, Japan and South Korea. We hope to have a good harvest," said Shen Ketai, a chief marketing officer of the exhibitor.
"We came almost two weeks ago. We are attending all three phases. We are looking something to sell on e-commerce. We found some very interesting massage devices, some ice baths, some scented candles. We definitely consider doing business with them," said Maruus Krasnickas, a buyer from Lithuania.
The 136th Canton Fair opened on Oct 15 and will run through Nov 4 in three phases, with the first phase ending on Oct 19, the second running from Oct 23 to 27, and the third phase starting on Oct 31.
Over 190,000 overseas buyers from 212 countries and regions participated in the first two phases of the ongoing Canton Fair, up 3.4 percent from the same phases of its previous edition.
Launched in 1957, the biannual Canton Fair is China's largest trade fair and widely seen as a barometer of the country's foreign trade. It takes place every spring and autumn in Guangzhou.
New designs highlight Phase III of Canton Fair
