The Chinese market

The area of Vardaris is located on the outskirts of the western part of the historic centre, near the New Railway Station. For years, it had been known for the red-lights district of ‘Bara’ and the sex trade that had been taking place there, which continues to this day. For the past two decades, this has been the site of operation for the ever mutable area of the Chinese market.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Thessaloniki’s clothing sector has been in continuous decline, causing mass closures of manufacturing units, small factories, fashion houses, retail and wholesale stores, as well as the decimation of the relevant contract manufacturing business. Nowadays, the remaining clothing production is often outsourced to foreign countries with lower production costs. By the end of the 1990s, the disintegration of the manufacturing sector and the deep economic crisis that hit the exports and trade of Thessaloniki had left behind a string of abandoned buildings and facilities that used to house the manufacturers of Vardaris.

It was at that point that a new and expansive product and garment market emerged on the western outskirts of the city’s centre: the Chinese market. According to Hatziprokopiou, due to the low rents and the old age of the buildings, the area of Vardaris had been increasingly attracting migrants looking for cheap housing or storage space for their commercial activities, to the point of overcrowding. As a result, old manufacturing units, apartments and storehouses opened again to host these new clothing and small item trading businesses run mainly by Chinese traders. Some of these spaces were also converted into dwellings for the Chinese migrants working in the trade of mass-produced clothing and small-ticket items. A few years later, large parts of the western city centre, an area which used to be bustling with manufacturing activity, would be transformed by the rapid expansion of short-term rentals and entertainment venues.