This chapter focuses on a single specific node that is of significance for the activities of many of the traders discussed in this book– the Chinese international trade city of Yiwu. It documents differences in the expectations that Chinese policymakers and commodity traders have of Yiwu’s status as an inter-Asian commercial node. City planners in Yiwu have sought to enhance Ythe city’s international renown as a centre for the global trade in ‘small commodities’. Thousands of international traders working in Yiwu– including those from Afghanistan who are the focus of this book– have played an active and visible role in the city’s commercial dynamics since the mid-1990s in particular. Far from seeing Yiwu solely as a commercial infrastructure hub, however, the traders emphasise their emotional and cultural attachments to the city. The traders also believe that the manifold contributions they have made to Yiwu’s development entitles them to a settled place in the city’s future. The chapter explores the ways in which tensions between these two different perspectives on Yiwu’s status as an inter-Asian commercial node play out in in the traders’ experiences of daily life in the city.