Nestled away in a remote part of Guangdong province, the small port of Jieshi has developed a niche over the past 20 years as a hub for smuggled goods.
From watches in the 1980s to second-hand motorcycles in the 1990s, Jieshi has long been a wholesale market for illegal consumer goods entering the mainland marketplace. At the moment, Jieshi is famed for one product more than any other: second-hand clothing.
Jieshi has a population of about 400,000 and, to the naked eye, it seems much like any other small provincial town. Tracksuit-clad teenagers tumble out of their schools in the late afternoon sun, motorcyclists honk their horns, and traders line the streets selling wares out of suitcases and makeshift stalls.
There is little to indicate the storm that has swept through Jieshi's No1 industry in recent weeks - an anti-smuggling campaign. Only one side street, where dozens of shops have been barricaded shut, hints at the persistence of the police raids.
The kilometre-long lane was until recently described by local people as a used-clothes market but, following the raids, many traders have taken their business off the side streets and into houses and offices in the surrounding maze of alleys. No outsiders can find them; only well-connected motorcycle-taxi drivers know where the clothes are being sold.
'You said you were from Guangzhou, right? Can I see your ID?' Chen, a Jieshi native, asked suspiciously in the living room of his three-storey house. Inside, used clothes were piled up to the ceiling.