Yiwu (China) is one of the biggest wholesale markets in the world. Both an industrial district and a cosmopolitan urban neighborhood, this city of the Zhejiang province, South of Shangai, three hours of train away from it, has positioned itself since the 2000s as one of the major starting places for the “new silk roads”, supplying in small commodities a vast part of the world’s market. This article aims at better understanding how, from these routes, trading places have been created in Algeria and Egypt with a national influence and international connections, and how a transnational trading post is built up, where the presence of Arab entrepreneurs, restaurant owners, translators, purchasers or migrants is set to become a permanent feature. It is an inconspicuous globalization that is shaping up, anchoring North Africa into the global networks of transnational exchanges.