Dawang Village, an unassuming urban village near the Luohu Checkpoint is home to a tiny community of small-time traders from the Philippines, who buy goods from Shenzhen and sell them in their native country.

The village, with its low rents and its proximity to Hong Kong, from where most goods depart, is especially attractive to the Filipino traders, at least 10 of whom reside there at any given point of time. During the peak business period, that number could be as high as 100.

Leo Aunulfo, 30, is one of them. A Dawang Village resident for six years now, he was first brought here by his wife. Aunulfo is a seasoned businessman: he buys goods from Dongmen, a place he claims he knows "every corner of," and sells them through the nine shops that he owns in Manila, all run by his brothers, sisters and parents.

"I buy the latest bags, women's decorations and shoes to sell back in the Philippine," says Aunulfo, 30, whose wife first came to Hong Kong 10 years ago.

"Made-in-China commodities, especially those from Shenzhen and Guangzhou, are cheap and sell well in the Philippine. For example, the price of an MP3 is 30 percent cheaper here than in the Philippine," he said.

Aunulfo's daily routine is simple: a trip to Dongmen in the afternoon, where he buys the goods at knock-down prices, and then to Hong Kong at night to put the wares on a plane to the Philippines. Manila is only a 90-minute flight from Hong Kong.

Possibly the strangest part of the experience of the Filipino businessmen in Shenzhen is that their grasp of the Chinese language can at best be described as rudimentary, and yet that does not seem to affect their business. Aunulfo is an example: he takes bus 211 to Dongmen, knowing only to get off at the bus stop whose name begins with the letter "D." He negotiates prices with Chinese traders by using simple English, and Arabic numerals.

Dawang Village, despite its popularity with the Filipinos, is not a favorite of local officials, who claim they find it difficult to manage the foreign migrants. "It's difficult to communicate with these people because of the language barrier," said a village official who gave only his surname Lai.

Editor: Wing